USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Westborough > The history of Westborough, Massachusetts. Part I. The early history. By Heman Packard De Forest. Part II. The later history. By Edward Craig Bates > Part 9
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
way. He was asked to baptize seven persons at Mr. Oake's house, "where ye Publick Assembly of that Corner of y Town was Commonly held." After much hesitation and consultation he performed the service on the 3d of April.
" But this was not done," says the cautious and reluctant minister, "before I had laid it before ye Chh. and Congregª of ye Town, and obtained their Concurrence ; nor was it till I had stopd ye Chh. members of ye North side of ye Town to make Enquiry into their meeting by themselves (that I might be certifyª of ye true Cause and ye manner thereof) and known of them that the Reasons of their so doing were not from Negligence, Disgust, &c., but because of ye inconvenient Dis- tance, and Difficulty of their and their Children's Travelling to ye Meeting House ; nor till it was known what faithfulness they had used in Improving ye means of public Instruction among them, & Dispensation of ye pure and holy Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet it was intimated to them that ye chh. ought to have expected some Word Concerning their Absence, and that ye Neglect thereof was undoubtedly a breach of Church order ; inasmuch as by our own Chh. Covt we are expressly bound to Hold Communion in the word and Sacrament. Unto which ye Brethren manifested their concurrence, as well as that they Desired and Purposed to approve themselves Covenant people."
This stern catechising at the hands of their spiritual head, now in the prime of manhood and wielding his sceptre with the strongest convictions of his divine right and of the necessity of maintaining strict order and disci- pline, was a sufficiently trying ordeal for the north-side people; but they, as well as he, had developed no little sturdy independence, and had no intention of giving up their purpose at anybody's dictation; and so, while they yielded so far as to take their lecture patiently, Mr. Parkman saw no course but to give way to the tendency
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BEGINNINGS OF DIVISION.
of events, and so gave their assembly the sanction of his priestly service in baptism. After that there was no going back.
In February, 1744, Mr. Parkman recorded in his Diary that he had received information that " a number of North side people met those of ye South side last night at Capt. Fay's, to gather subscriptions to a petition to ye General Court that ye Town may be divided." " At ye same meet- ing," he adds, with characteristic irrelevance, " Eliezer Rice broke his legg by wrestling with Silas Pratt." Nine years later the same Eliezer Rice became a terror to all unruly youths by assuming the black staff of a constable.
But this little act in the drama of separation, which ended with a broken leg, was succeeded by a movement which was likely to break the heart of the worthy minister. At the March meeting following, the north-side people refused to pay their rate toward the good man's salary, not from any dislike to him, but as a forcible measure to- ward separate incorporation. From that time he felt as if a part of his rightful parish had rejected him. He did not appreciate fully the necessities of the case, and only yielded to the inevitable with bitter disappointment.
But now that matters had gone so far, the remaining steps toward a practical division were rapidly taken. The petition prepared at the house of Captain Fay was duly presented in General Court; the town appointed, in May, a committee consisting of Capt. David Warren, Capt. John Maynard, and Mr. Francis Whipple, to make answer thereto; and the result was that while no new town was yet created, nor was to be for more than twenty years afterward, the north side was made a separate pre- cinct, with power to elect its own officers and transact its local business, and to constitute a separate parish, while
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the two precincts were to assemble for town meetings, to be held alternately in the meeting-houses of each precinct. This result was consummated on the 20th of October, 1744; and from that time the principal in- terest of our chronicle lies in the southern precinct, whose boundaries were essentially those of the present town of Westborough.
Another episode, so characteristic of the period as to claim more than a passing notice, occurred six years after the organization of the Church. It is a curious but well-attested fact that the bitterest disputes in the ecclesiastical organism have arisen in regard to the least essential matters. The general tendency received a spe- cial emphasis in the history of psalmody and music in the New England churches. The struggle between pro- gress and conservatism was long and bitter; party spirit ran high. On no subject was there such deep feeling. Never was there a more persistent clinging to that which was essentially bad on account of its age and venerable aspect.
The Church at Westborough came into being at a time when the subject of singing in worship was undergoing a slow and tortuous but inevitable revolution. The Ply- mouth pilgrims had brought with them from England Ainsworth's version of the Psalms, and used it until 1640. It had its imperfections as a book of sacred poetry, as witness the following rendering of the first verse of the first Psalm : -
"O Blessed man, that doth not in the wickeds counsell walk, nor stand in sinners way, nor sit in seat of scornful folk."
Still more lame is the effort to conform to the exact words of Scripture in Psalm cxxxvii., -
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CHURCH MUSIC.
" I. By Babel's rivers there sate wee, yea wept : when wee did mind, Sion.
2. The willows that amidds it bee our harps we hanged them upon.
3. For songs of us there ask did they that had us captive led-along ; and mirth they that us heaps did lay : Sing unto us some Sion's song."
Not less amusing to the cultured ear is the rendering of Psalm cxxxix., -
"Jehovah, thou hast searched me and known ; Thou knowest my rising and my sitting down ; Thou dost discreetly understand from far My cóg-i-ta-ti-ón fa-mil-i-ár."
A verse of Psalm lxxiv., of which the prose is as fol- lows: "Why drawest thou back thy hand, even thy right hand ? Pluck it out of thy bosom and consume them," was thus rendered, -
" Why dost withdraw thy hand abacke, And hide it in thy lappe ? O, plucke it out, and be not slacke, To give thy foes a rappe."
But these rude lines, to which long use made the earliest churches accustomed, became so sacred in their associations that when, in 1640, the Bay Psalm-Book was compiled by an association of New England min- isters, it met with great opposition. Salem would not give up Ainsworth until 1667, nor Plymouth till 1692. The questions raised in this discussion are curiosities of religious inquiry ; for example, - whether the singing of the Psalms of David in a lively voice was proper in these New Testament days; whether it was proper for one to sing, and the rest to join only in spirit and in saying amen, or for the whole congregation to sing ;
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
whether it was proper for women as well as men to sing ; whether "pagans" -i. e., the unconverted - should be permitted to sing with the rest. But in due time the Bay Psalm-Book came into general use throughout the Colony. Whether the ideal of poetic form had therein been reached, we may judge by the following rendering of Psalm cxxxiii. in the Bay Psalm-Book: -
" How good and sweet to see it's for bretheren to dwell together in unitee :
It's like choice oyle that fell the head upon that down did flow the beard unto beard of Arón :
The skirts of his garment that unto them went down: Like Hermon's dews descent Sión's mountains upon : for there to be the Lord's blessing life aye lasting commandeth hee."
Couple with this style of rhythmic flow the lack of tunes " understanded of the people," of which there were, until 1690, only eight or ten, - and these sung in different churches in totally different ways, - and one may gain some conception of the need of a reform. One of those who was most vigorous in laboring for a change writes that " every melody was tortured and twisted as every unskilful throat saw fit ; ... it sounded like five hundred different tunes roared out at the same time." And the time was as bad as the tune. "I myself," he says, " have twice in one note paused to take breath " !
About 1720 there came a revolt against this sheer wantonness of conservatism; and in the reform the pul-
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pit led off, assisting those who tried to introduce written music and better performance. Singing-schools came into existence; musical notation was introduced. All this was done in the midst of the most strenuous oppo- sition from the deacons and the people who stood for the good old way. The new way, they said, was not so melodious as the old! There were so many tunes, they never could learn them; it would lead to the use of instruments yet; the very names of the notes were blas- phemous. And a writer in the "New England Chron- icle" said: "Truly, I have a great jealousy that if we once begin to sing by rule, the next thing will be to pray by rule and preach by rule; and then comes Popery." In 1723 the Rev. Mr. Niles, of Braintree, suspended seven or eight of his church members for persistency in singing by rule.
But the matter was taken up vigorously by the clergy, and sermons and pamphlets were preached and published in defence of the new way. The Rev. Thomas Symmes, of Bradford, was prominent in the contest, and the puissant Cotton Mather came to the front with a bristling array of arguments. Finally, in the revivals that preceded the " Great Awakening. of 1740," the superiority of the new over the old was so completely demonstrated that the victory, so far as it had gone, was complete.
In Westborough, as in some other places, it was the pastor who was the daring innovator. The earliest mur- murs of the strife have died away without record, but on the 7th of September, 1730, the town took the matter up, as indicated in the following unique record : -
"Pursuant to an order from the selectmen, the town met. I uote, Jacob Amsden chose moderator for this meeting ; James Ball and Jacob Amsden enter their Decents against the suck-
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EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
seading uote. 2ly, uote to see whether or no the town will sing the usual way, and the uote passed in the Affirmative."
In the February following, a church meeting was held in relation to the matter, which had grown to serious dimensions. There was grave talk of discipline, if it could be found who the chief offenders were. James Ball and Jacob Amsden must have been a little uneasy in their minds just then. The pastor, who knows well enough that he is regarded as the most blameworthy, writes of it in his Journal with customary solemnity, but with a certain vagueness, as though there might be more behind.
" Upon Prospect of the season revolving, and therewith Hope of Opportunity for ye Holy Communion, it appeared needful, by Prayer and other suitable and Prudent endeavors, to prepare and dress our souls with a Wedding Garment, to meet our Glorious Lord thereat."
The meeting, when it came, hardly fulfilled this spir- itual prospectus; and there is a much more earthly ring, even in the pastor's voice, when the battle is fairly set. Opportunity was given for complaints, whereupon Thomas Forbush intimated, with an outspoken boldness that shows how heated the public mind had become, that the trouble was occasioned by the pastor's not falling in with the vote of the town. This was speaking out in meeting, and brought the minister to his feet without more ado. The town, he said, had not proceeded according to church rule or civil law or his own counsel; nor yet had he opposed them, nor disturbed them in their singing, but had only appointed the person to read (i. e., " line out") the psalm and set the tune, and to say what tune should be sung. He proceeded to charge that the town meeting on an
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article of divine worship was irregular, if not positively sinful, and any church members who had a hand in it were then and there rebuked.
So the parson stood at bay, defying the whole town. What happened thereupon? Did the people rise in their wrath and send him adrift, as they might in these degen- erate days? The minister of that time held his office by no such flimsy tenure. He simply proceeded to ask them - not as one who sought their suffrages, but rather as though they might be thankful that they got no more severe handling-if there was still any uneasiness; and no one responding, he treated them to a brief dissertation on love and unity, and dropped the matter. The victory was plainly his, by virtue of the divinity that did hedge about a minister in those days; and there is no farther disturbance recorded on that ground for forty years after- ward. It was the minister against the town, and the minister won, not so much by argument- though the argument was on his side - as by authority. That was the power of the early New England clergy; and it was fortunate for the people when, as in Mr. Parkman's case, the minister was disposed to use his power in the inter- est of popular progress. Westborough was not always so fortunate, as we shall see.
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CHAPTER IX.
1730-1744.
CHURCH ORDER. - PHASES OF CHURCH LIFE. - THE GREAT AWAKENING. - AN ANNIVERSARY SERMON.
TT would be interesting, if it were possible, to restore a glimpse of the religious life of that period, in order to the better understanding of the events which revolu- tionized it. The early part of the century was for several reasons a time of general religious decadence. Here in New England, as we have seen, the settlers were too much occupied with their own affairs to give much thought to the affairs of another world. Between " buying a piece of land " or " five yoke of oxen " or " marrying a wife," they were ready to excuse themselves from absorbing interest in the kingdom of heaven. And in England there was at the same period a time of general looseness and corrup- tion. The clergy lost their spirituality, the higher classes gave themselves up to frivolity, and the lower classes be- came profligate and debauched. It was the reaction from this state of affairs in the mother-country that produced the great Methodist awakening, which, with all its extrava- gances, was a real forward movement in the kingdom of God, destined powerfully to affect two continents.
Here, during the period of indifference, measures were adopted by the ministry and the more earnest leaders of the church which kept the truth from stagnation and pre- pared the way for better times. We cannot, indeed, restore what is of most value in the church life of that day; it
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is not a matter of records and documents. The throbbing heart of spiritual life, which is the soul of all history, can- not live again in printer's ink. But there are one or two special phases of that life which demand a passing notice.
The desire for religious stimulus, which expresses itself to-day in endless meetings, conventions, associations, and itinerant evangelism, was then forced, through lack of easy and frequent communication, to find vent in occasional fasts, to which the neighboring ministers were invited, and which consisted of awakening discourses and prayers by the ministers, with no lay help. Not only were the an- nual fast-days sacredly observed, but in connection with every unusual occurrence in Nature (every drought, every season of epidemics, and notably the earthquakes of 1727 and 1755), on every special occasion (the founding of the church, the illness of the minister, the separation of the north part of the town), and whenever the ministers felt that the people needed rousing, the inevitable means resorted to was a fast.
It is an illustration of this that the Worcester Associa- tion of Ministers, organized in 1725, of which Mr. Park- man was the youngest member, voted in 1731 to turn the Association meetings into fasts "for the reviving of re- ligion, and imploring the Divine blessing upon the rising generation." For more than a year this was kept up, the ministers preaching in rotation. This was not, indeed, or- dinary; it indicated the beginning of a movement which was soon to spread over all the region: but it marks the habit of the time. One of these meetings was held at Westborough Nov. 17, 1731, and Mr. Parkman adds to the record of the meeting in his Diary this characteristic utter- ance : "O that it may be a fast that He has chosen ! O that our offerings might be pleasant to the Lord our God,
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and that the great designs of the fast might be answered'; that we might feel and see a happy influence thereof upon ourselves and our children !"
Another means of promoting religious life and nurture, which was not occasional but regular in its operation, was the catechising of the children and young people by the minister. This was infrequent, occurring regularly but once a year, but looked forward to and prepared for, and dreaded too, by all the children, from Dan to Beersheba. The ex- ercise took place in mid-winter in the cold meeting-house, the boys attending in the morning, and the girls in the afternoon. It was discomfort enough to sit in the unheated meeting-house, into which no stove was introduced for a century after the founding of this church; but the children were used to that, for they had to attend on Sundays as well, and though the warmth disseminated from the audience made it a little more tolerable then, it was anything but com- fortable. On a cold Sunday in January, 1686, Judge Sewall wrote in his Diary: " So cold that the sacramental bread is frozen pretty hard, and rattles sadly into the plates !"
But the cold was a small trial to the hardy children be- side the dread of the ordeal of catechising and the awe of the benignant and dignified man in gown and wig, who was to them the embodiment of all the awful sanctities of religion. The man who could carry his will with the congre- gation, and whom no man dared answer except under the stress of excitement, was looked upon with profound rever- ence by the children. Yet this catechising, which was a bequest from the old English custom, was not without benefit. Setting aside the dread of it, and the more seri- ous objection that the children were taught things they could in no wise understand, which is always bad instruc- tion, there were elements in the custom of much value. It
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connected the children definitely with the ordinances of the church; it taught them some things, in the way of Scrip- ture history, which it was good for them to know; and it created a sense of responsibility in them that helped to make them sturdier men and women when they grew up. But one of the best outgrowths of the custom appeared here in the coming to the pastor voluntarily, in 1741, of ten young women to confer respecting a further catecheti- cal exercise which they desired. A class was immediately formed, and the first lesson given out. It consisted of "three answers of the Westminster Assembly's Catechism, with proofs; and to wait upon an exposition " of the same by the pastor. The next week, at the first recitation, four- teen more young women came, and the next month six more, - making a noble class, whose frequent gathering was a stimulus to the pastor, and full of promise for the future.
A third aspect of church life peculiar to that day is indicated by the emphasis that was put upon church discipline. This was faithfully maintained, and with a punctiliousness which indicates how important it was considered. The early records of the church seem, on a hasty reading, to be made up almost wholly of cases of discipline. Confessions were required from even slight offenders before they were admitted to communion, and in cases whose triviality occasions a smile. The authority of the church was most strenuously insisted upon and ex- ercised, howbeit with an evident desire to use all charity and tenderness. Mr. Parkman seems to have been especi- ally courteous and kind in dealing with offenders, yet un- flinching in doing his duty as the executor of church law. It is a fact which looks rather startling at first, that within two and a half years from the organization of the church in this little town there occurred six public confessions
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of some form of violation of the seventh commandment. It is also quite unintelligible to modern understanding that, in one case, a man was kept on trial, and suspended from the church some twenty-two years, before the final issue was reached. Yet in spite of exaggerations, this carefulness maintained, amid troublous times and among an independent and strong-willed people, a condition of comparative health and purity in the church, and gave to the world the conviction that the church believed most heartily in virtue, integrity, and order.
These were the customary aspects of church life in that day; but during the agitation concerning the division of the town there swept over the whole country a great wave of religious excitement, unprecedented in all its history, which constituted an era in the life of the church here, as it did everywhere. The year 1740 witnessed the beginning of the most marked demonstrations of what was known as "The Great Awakening." It was the year in which White- field began his work in this country. Five years before, Jonathan Edwards had shaken Northampton and all the Connecticut valley with the terror of his delineations of the doom inpending over all his unconverted hearers. In the South, Gilbert Tennent had done a similar work in the Presbyterian churches. And now, under the eloquence of the young Whitefield, twenty-six years of age, impas- sioned, zealous, and becoming, under the influence of the success and flattery which followed him, intensely fanat- ical, a contagion of excitement spread all over the land. Crowds flocked to hear him. People neither ate nor slept. Strange physical phenomena manifested themselves every- where. Edwards had the sense to repudiate these mani- festations as in no sense a part of the real work of grace; but not so Whitefield and his followers. Naturally it was
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THE GREAT AWAKENING.
not long before extremists arose, who cared only for these crazy freaks. That was the signal for a strong reaction. By 1743 protests against the extravagances of fanatics be- gan to come in from the leading ministers of the country and from the educational centres; and when Whitefield re- turned to the country, after an absence, in 1744, he found a decided change in the atmosphere, and many pulpits closed to him. The movement had spent itself.
It had done good. Violent as it was, it had cleared the atmosphere like a thunder-storm. It had been inevitable. It was the crisis of the conflict which had been going on for a century between the truth taught and the habits adopted. The failure properly to sift the membership of the churches; the adoption of the " half-way covenant; " and the belief in salvation by sacraments which followed naturally upon the rest, in connection with the study of Scripture and the Catechism, - had been preparing ex- plosive material; and this was the result. And with all the incidental evils which accompanied and followed the movement, there was this clear gain, that the church was thoroughly cured of those particular weaknesses which had previously threatened its integrity.
During this time of universal excitement Westborough had not failed to be deeply stirred. Whitefield preached in Marlborough in the middle of October, 1740, on his way to meet Edwards at Northampton. In 1742 there were great manifestations of interest at Leicester and Grafton and other neighboring towns; and Westborough felt the movement to a great extent. Jonathan Edwards preached here the 2d of February of that year, and again the 20th of October, with marked effect. There were here also, as elsewhere, the manifestations of over- wrought sensibilities. On the 13th of January, 1743, Mr.
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Parkman wrote in his Diary: " A number of children were supposed to be much filled with the Spirit, and carried out in spiritual joy last night at Mr. Fay's. An Indian girl in great distress for her brother, and Betty Fay in terrors." One Isaiah Pratt lay insensible for a long time, his pulse exceedingly slow; and when he awoke, said he " had seen hell, and had also seen Christ, who told him that his name was in the Book of Life." Mr. Parkman counselled him wisely, gave him no encouragement to rely on his visions, and referred him to the plain word of God for direction. Amid all the excitements Mr. Parkman seems to have acted the part of a calm, wise man, rejoicing with joy unspeakable in all signs of the work of God, but pained and perplexed by the hysterical accompaniments, which nevertheless never carried him away from his discretion. When, in 1743, a protest was issued, signed by a large number of New England pastors, against the extrava- gances of the more fanatical evangelists, his name ap- peared among the rest. This was a second protest of the ministers, issued because it was felt that the first had been too radical for a politic paper. It was a wise, clear- headed document, whose positions time has but empha- sized. These ministers, while rejoicing in the good fruits of the great revival, protest against emphasizing impulses, to the detriment of the judgment and sense; against en- couraging excesses of physical demonstration ; against the invasion of the ministerial office by exhorters and irregular workers; against the tendency to run away from the regu- lar church and ministry to seek excitements. It is good cause for congratulation to find the first minister of West- borough thus in harmony with the most judicious of his brethren. On the 9th of January of the same year he records the action of a church meeting at which "the
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