USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 61
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The third period in the history of the Episcopal Church in Boston, reaching from 1843 to about 1861, is not so peaceful as the last. Before Bishop Griswold died the signs of coming disagreement had appeared ; and even before it was felt in this country, a new and aggressive school of church life had taken definite shape in England. This is not the place to write the history of that great movement which within less than fifty years has so changed the life of the English Church. In 1833 the first of the so-named Tracts for the Times was issued at Oxford, and from then until 1841 the constant succession of treatises, devoted to the development of what became known as Traetarian or Puseyite ideas, kept alive a per-
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petual tumult in the Church of England. Led by such men as Dr. Pusey and John Henry Newman, the school attracted many of the ablest and most devoted of young Englishmen. The points which its theology magnified were the apostolical succession of the ministry, baptismal regeneration, the eucharistic sacrifice, and church tradition as a rule of faith. Connected with its doctrinal beliefs, there came an increased attention to church ceremonies and an effort to surround the celebration of divine worship with mystery and splendor.
This great movement, - this Catholic Revival, as its earnest disciples love to call it, - was most natural. It was the protest and self-assertion of a partly neglected side of religious life ; it was a reaction against some of the dominant forms of religious thought which had become narrow and exclusive; it was the effort of the church to complete the whole sphere of her life; it was the expression of certain perpetual and ineradicable tendencies of the human soul. No wonder, therefore, that it was power- ful. It made most enthusiastic devotees ; it organized new forms of life ; it created a new literature ; it found its way into the halls of legislation ; it changed the aspect of whole regions of education. No wonder, also, that in a place so free-minded and devout as Boston each one of the per- manent tendencies of religious thought and expression should sooner or later seek for admission. Partly in echo, therefore, of what was going on in England, and partly as the simultaneous result of the same causes which had produced the movement there, it was not many years before the same school arose in the Episcopal Church in America; and it showed itself first in Boston in the organization of the Church of the Advent. The first services of this new parish were held in an upper room at No. 13 Merrimac Street, on Dec. 1, 1844. Shortly after, the congregation moved to a hall at the corner of Lowell and Causeway streets, and on Nov. 28, 1847, it took possession of a church in Green Street, where it remained until 1864. Its rector was Dr. William Croswell, a man of most attractive character and beautiful purity of life. We have seen him already as min- ister of Christ Church from 1829 to 1840. After his resignation of that parish he became rector of St. Peter's Church, Auburn, New York, whence he returned to Boston to undertake the new work of the Church of the Advent. The feature made most prominent by its founders with regard to the new parish was that the church was free. This, combined with its more frequent services, its daily public recitation of morning and evening prayer, an increased attention to the details of worship, the lights on its stone altar, and its use of altar-cloths, were the visible signs which distin- guished it from the other parishes in town.
By this time the poor and friendless population of Boston had grown very large, and the minister and laity of the Church of the Advent, in com- mon with those of the other parishes in the city, devoted much time and attention to their visitation and relief.
Bishop Griswold before his death had fcared the influence of the new
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school of churchmanship, and had written a tract with the view of meeting what he thought to be its dangers; but the duty of dealing with the new state of things in Boston fell mostly to the lot of his successor. In the year 1842 the Rev. Dr. Manton Eastburn, rector of the Church of the Ascension in New York, had become rector of Trinity Church in Boston, and had been consecrated assistant-bishop of Massachusetts. That interesting cerc- mony took place in Trinity Church on Dec. 29, 1842. On Bishop Gris- wold's death, in 1843, Bishop Eastburn succeeded him; and in his Con- vention address of 1844 we find him already lifting up his voice against " certain views which, having made their appearance at various periods since the Reformation, and passed away, have been again brought forward in our time." These remonstrances are repeated almost yearly for the rest of the bishop's life. On Dec. 2, 1845, Bishop Eastburn issued a pastoral letter to the clergy of his diocese, in which he recounts his disapprobation of " various offensive innovations upon the ancient usage of our church," which he had witnessed on the occasion of a recent episcopal visit to the Church of the Advent. On Nov. 24, 1846, he writes to Dr. Croswell that he cannot visit the parish officially again until the offensive arrangements of the church are altered. These utterances of the bishop led to a long dis- cussion and correspondence which lasted for the next ten years. On Nov. 9, 1851, Dr. Croswell died very suddenly, and Bishop Eastburn's discussion was continued with his successor, the Right Rev. Horatio Southgate. It was not until Dec. 14, 1856, that the parish received again the visitation of its bishop; and in his report to the diocesan convention in 1857 Bishop Eastburn explains the change in his action by saying that " the General Con- vention having passed, during its session in October last, a new canon on episcopal visitations, I appointed the above mentioned day, shortly after the close of its sittings, for a visit to the Church of the Advent, for the purpose 'of administering confirmation."
This, closed the open conflict between the bishop and the parish. In 1864 the Church of the Advent moved from Green Street to its present building in Bowdoin Street, where it was served, after Bishop Southgate's departure in 1858, by the Rev. Dr. Bolles. Upon his resignation in 1870 the parish passed into the ministry of members of an English society of mission priests, known as the Brotherhood of St. John the Evangelist, and in 1872 the Rev. Charles C. Grafton, a member of that society, became its rector. In 1878 it began the erection of a new church in Brimmer Street, which is not yet completed. The peculiarities of faith and worship of this parish have always made it a prominent and interesting object in the church life of Boston.
But during these years of conflict the healthy life and growth of the church were going on. In 1842 began the long and powerful rectorship of the Rev. Dr. Alexander H. Vinton at St. Paul's Church. For seventeen years his ministry there gave noble dignity to the life of the church in Bos- ton, and was the source of vast good to many souls. His work may be con-
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sidered as having done more than that of any other man who ever preached in Boston, to bring the Episcopal Church into the understanding, the sym- pathy, and the respect of the people. His vigorous mind and great acquire- ments and commanding character and carnest eloquence made him a most influential power in the city and the church. He was met as he first came to St. l'aul's by a deep religious interest which was only the promise of the profound spiritual life which will always make the years of his ministry here memorable and sacred. He remained in Boston until 1858, when he re- moved to Philadelphia; but later in life, in 1869, he returned to his old home, and was rector of Emmanuel Church till December, 1877. As these pages are being written he has just passed away, leaving a memory which will be a perpetual treasure to the church. He died in Philadel- phia on April 26, 1881.
In 1843 the growth of the city southward toward the Neck was marked by the organization of the new Church of the Messiah in Florence Street, which, under the ministry of the Rev. George M. Randall, sprang at once to useful life. The parish worshipped for a while in a hall at the corner of Washington and Common streets. The corner-stone of the new Church was laid Nov. 10, 1847, and the church was consecrated Aug. 29, 1848. In 1843 the mission work of the Rev. E. M. P. Wells, which afterward be- came so well known, and which was never wholly abandoned till his death, began at what was called Trinity Hall in Summer Street. About the same time the Rev. J. P. Robinson began a mission for sailors in Ann Street, which for many years excited the interest and clicited the generosity of the Episcopalians of Boston, and which still survives in what is called the Free Church of St. Mary, for sailors, in Richmond Street. In 1846 an indi- vidual act of Christian generosity provided the building of St. Stephen's Chapel in Purchase Street, the gift of Mr. William Appleton, where Dr. Wells labored in loving and humble sympathy and companionship with the poor until, on the terrible night of Nov. 9, 1872, the great fire swept his church and house away. He was a remarkable man, with a genius for charity, and a childlike love for God.
Meanwhile a parish was slowly growing into life in the populous district of East Boston. St. John's Church was organized there in 1845. After many disappointments and disasters it finished and occupied its house of worship in 1852. In 1849 St. Mary's Church in Dorchester was added to the number of suburban churches. In 1851 St. Mark's Church at the South End finds its first mention in the record of the acceptance of its rectorship by the Rev. P. H. Greenleaf, who had just resigned the charge of St. John's Church in Charlestown. The next year this new church bought for itself a church building which it afterward removed to Newton Street, and in which it is still worshipping. In 1856 the Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Lambert began his ministry in Charlestown, and the Rev. William R. Babcock came to Jamaica Plain. In 1860 the Rev. Dr. William R. Nicholson became rector of St. Paul's Church, and the Rev. George S. Converse of St. James's.
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These were years full of life, a life which, if it sometimes became restless and controversial, flowed for the most part in a steady stream of zealous and ever-widening work. The traditions which had bound the church al- most exclusively to the rich and cultivated were cast aside. It had ac- cepted its mission to all classes and conditions of men. The number of communicants increased. In 1847 there were about two thousand in the churches of what then was Boston, and men whom the city knew and felt and honored were preaching in the Episcopal pulpits.
With the year 1860 begins the latest period of our history. A new Boston was growing up on the Back Bay; the country was just entering on the great struggle with rebellion and slavery; and the fixed lines of theological thought were being largely broken through. All of thesc changes were felt in the fortunes of the Episcopal Church in Boston. On March 17, 1860, a meeting of those who were desirous of forming a new Episcopal church, west of the Public Garden, was held at the residence of Mr. William R. Lawrence, 98 Beacon Street. The result of this meeting, and the others to which it led, was the organization of Emmanuel Church, and the erection of its house of worship in Newbury Street, which was consecrated April 24, 1862. The parish held its services, before its church building was finished, in the Mechanics' Hall, at the corner of Bedford and Chauncy streets. Of this parish the first rector was the Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Huntington, who had long been honorably known in Boston, first as the minister of the South Congregational Church, in the Unitarian denomination, and afterward as the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Preacher to the University at Cambridge. It was in view of his leav- ing his Unitarian associations, and seeking orders in the Episcopal Church, and in expectation of his becoming its rector, that the parish of Emmanuel Church was organized. Dr. Huntington was ordained Deacon in Trinity Church, on Wednesday Sept. 12, 1860, Bishop Burgess, of Maine, preach- ing the sermon. On the next Sunday he took charge of his new congre- gation, and his ministry from that time until he was made Bishop of the diocese of Central New York, in 1869, was one of the most powerful influ- ences which the Episcopal Church has ever exercised in Boston. Under his care Emmanuel Church became at once a strong parish, and soon put forth its strength in missionary work. It founded in 1863 a mission chapel in the ninth ward, from which came by and by the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, which now, with its pleasant building in Cortes Street, is an in- dependent and useful parish church.
In 1860 St. Matthew's Church in South Boston, which had for twenty- two years enjoyed the wise and gracious ministry of the Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Clinch, was left without a rector by his resignation; and in 1861 the Rev. Dr. J. I. T. Coolidge was chosen to supply his place. Dr. Coolidge, like Dr. Huntington, had been a Unitarian minister, and had only a short time before received ordination in the Episcopal Church.
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In 1861 the war broke out, and for the next four years the country was in the struggle with Rebellion. It is good to find that from the Bishop's chair there came no hesitating utterances of loyalty. In his Convention address in 1861 Bishop Eastburn denounces the " nefarious rebellion." In 1862 he congratulates the Convention on the " success with which thus far a gracious Providence has crowned the armies of the Union in their con- flict with the perpetrators of rebellion." In 1863 he rejoices over the loyal utterances of the late General Convention, and particularly over the pastoral letter of the bishops: "A masterly document it is, represent- ing this stupendous insurrection as a criminal violation of God's law, and strengthening its positions by reference not only to the Bible, but to the pungent old homily of our church against rebellion." In 1864 his Con- vention address bespeaks sympathy for " the wounded thousands among our soldiers and among the legions of our misguided enemies; " and at last, in 1865, he rejoices over the sight of " a most wicked rebellion at last defeated, its military power broken, and the dawn appearing of what we trust will ere long be a bright day of Union restored, of the renewal of the arts of peace, and of the blotting out of human bondage from every por- tion of the national territory." Such words are full of the positiveness which belonged to Bishop Eastburn's character, and which made him for so many years a powerful element in the diocese over which he presided and in the city where he lived. He held to his convictions with most un- questioning faithfulness, and strove with all his might to impress them on his congregation and on the church. His long ministry at Trinity Church will always be remembered; and when he resigned his rectorship in 1868 he carried with him the love of many and the respect of all. He was assisted at Trinity Church by several men who have been among the most eminent clergymen of the Episcopal Church. The Rev. John L. Watson, the Rev. Dr. Thomas M. Clark, now Bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, the Rev. Dr. John Cotton Smith, the Rev. Dr. Alexander G. Mercer, and the Rev. Dr. Henry C. Potter were successively associated with Bishop East- burn as assistant ministers on the Greene foundation. After the bishop's resignation of the rectorship of Trinity Church, the Rev. Phillips Brooks became its minister in 1869.
Various missionary enterprises and efforts for the extension of the church occurred during the war, and in the years immediately following its close. In 1861 St. James's Church, Roxbury, established a mission chapel on Tremont Street, which, under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Converse, became a few years later an independent parish, named St. John's. In 1877 St. James's Church, now under the ministry of the Rev. Percy Browne, again manifested its energetic life by the establishment of another mission chapel, in Cottage Street in Dorchester, which is called St. Anne's Chapel. In 1867 St. Mary's Church in Dorchester began a mission in Milton Lower Mills, which has grown into a distinct parish, bearing the name of All Saints'. In 1875, after Dr. Vinton had succeeded Dr. Huntington as rec-
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tor of Emmanuel Church, his assistant, the Rev. B. B. Killikelly founded a mission at the West End of Boston, which, bearing the name of the Frce Chapel of the Evangelists, is now under the care of Trinity Church. In 1875 a mission at City Point was organized by the Rev. John Wright, rector of St. Matthew's Church. In 1873 a new mission grew up in the part of South Boston called Washington Village, which is known as Grace Chapel, under the charge of the Board of City Missions.
All these are signs of life and energy. Only once has a parish ceased to be. In 1862 the Rev. Dr. Charles Mason, rector of Grace Church, died. He has left a record of the greatest purity of life and faithfulness in work. After his death the parish of Grace Church became so feeble that at last its life departed. Its final report is made in 1865, when it records that the building in Temple Street had been sold to the Methodist Episcopal Society of North Russell Street. Grace Church had been in existence almost forty years.
These last years also have seen great changes in the personal leader- ship of the parishes and of the church. Bishop Eastburn died Sept. 12, 1872, after an episcopate of thirty years; and his successor, the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Henry Paddock, was consecrated in Grace Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., on Sept. 17, 1873. After Dr. Randall was made bishop of Col- orado in 1865, the Rev. Pelham Williams became rector of the Church of the Messiah, and he was succeeded in 1877 by the Rev. Henry F. Allen. In 1877 Dr. Vinton gave up the rectorship of Emmanuel Church, and in 1878 the Rev. Leighton Parks became his successor. The Rev. Henry Burroughs became the rector of the venerable Christ Church in 1868, and the Rev. William Wilberforce Newton succeeded the Rev. Treadwell Walden as rector of St. Paul's Church in 1877.
Very gradually, and by imperceptible degrees, the parishes of Boston have changed their character during this hundred years which we have been surveying. Their churches have ceased to be mere places of worship for the little groups which had combined to build them, preserving carefully the chartered privileges of their parishioners. They have aspired to become re- ligious homes for the community, and centres of religious work for the help of all kinds of suffering and need. Many of the churches are free, open- ing their pews without discrimination to all who choose to come. Those which are not technically free are eager to welcome the people. In places which the influence of the parish churches cannot reach, local chapels have been freely built. It would be interesting to trace the causes which have both drawn and driven the churches of all denominations to this effort after larger fellowship with the people. In the case of the Episcopal Church it 1 is specially significant, as indicating that she is no longer a stranger in the land.
Besides the parish life of the Episcopal Church in Boston, and the insti- tutions which have grown up under distinctively parochial control, the gen- eral educational and charitable institutions of the church should not be left
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unmentioned. For many years the project of establishing a Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Boston, or somewhere in its imme- diate neighborhood, had been from time to time recurring. Once or twice small beginnings had been made, but they had never come to any permanent result. In 1867 a very generous gift of Mr. Benjamin Tyler Reed secured what had so long been wanted; and the Episcopal Divinity School of Cam- bridge was founded on a strong basis which insures its perpetuity. Since that time other liberal gifts have increased its equipment, and it is now one of the best provided theological schools in the country. Though not properly a part of Harvard University, it shares many of its privileges and draws many advantages from its neighborhood.
The Church Home for Orphans and Destitute Children, which is now situated at South Boston, was founded in 1855, by the Rev. Charles Mason, who was then rector of Grace Church. St. Luke's Home for Convales- cents, which has its house in the Highlands, was established originally as a parish charity of the Church of the Messiah, during the ministry of the Rev. Dr. Pelham Williams, but it is now an institution of the church at large, and its affairs are administered by a board, of which the bishop is the head.
The great fire of Nov. 9 and 10, 1872, destroyed two of the Episco- pal churches of Boston, - Trinity Church in Summer Street, and St. Stephen's Chapel in Purchase Street. St. Stephen's has not yet been re- built. Trinity had already begun the preparations for a new church before the fire; and the new buildings1 on Huntington Avenue were conse- crated on Friday, Feb. 9, 1877, by Bishop Paddock, the consecration ser- mon being preached by the Rev. Dr. Vinton, then rector of Emmanuel Church. Between the time of the fire and the consecration of the new church the services of Trinity Church were held in the Hall of the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology, in Boylston Street.
These are the principal events which have marked the history of the Episcopal Church in Boston during this last period of the century. There are within the present city limits twenty-two churches and chapels, with five thousand six hundred and seventy-five communicants, and four thous- and two hundred and forty-nine scholars in their Sunday-schools.
And these last twenty years have been full of life and movement in theological thought. The Tractarian revival of 1845 has passed into its more distinctively ritualistic stage; and the broader theology, which also had its masters in England, in such men as Dr. Arnold and the Rev. Frederick D. Maurice, has likewise had its clear and powerful effect upon the Episcopal Church in Boston. A lofty belief in man's spiritual possi- bilities, a large hope for man's eternal destinies, a desire for the careful and critical study of the Bible, and an earnest insistence upon the com-
1 [A view of the new Trinity is given in the chapter on " Architecture in Boston," in Vol. IV. - ED.J.
VOL. III. - 59.
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prehensive character of the Church of Christ, - these are the character- istics of much of the most zealous pulpit teaching and parish life of these later days.
The Episcopalian of a century ago, whatever might be his surprise at the outward progress which his church has made in Boston, would be still more surprised, if he should come among us now, at the variety in ways of worship, the freedom in the search for truth, and the earnestness of the desire to reach all men and help them, which are the hope and promise for the future of the Episcopal Church in Boston.
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CHAPTER XI.
THE UNITARIANS IN BOSTON.
BY THE REV. ANDREW P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D., Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in Harvard University.
T "HE carliest intimation of dissent in Boston from the normal Calvin- istic creed of the Congregational churches is in connection with the settlement of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, as pastor of the West Church, in 1747. He was regarded as heretical at that time; in the council that ordained him there was no Boston minister, and he never became a member of the Boston Association of Ministers. As a man of genius, energy, and influence, he had hardly his equal among the clergy. He was among the pioneers of the American Revolution, and numbered among his most intimate friends those of his fellow-townsmen who afterward bore the most active part in the conflict with Great Britain. The son of a mission- ary to the Indians, he distinguished himself by a controversy on the dis- posal of the funds of the English Society for Propagating the Gospel, which he contended had been bestowed for the evangelization of the Indians and the exigencies of poor colonists, and, as he maintained, wrongfully perverted to the support of Episcopal churches in old and established communities. Among the antagonists thus brought into the field was no less a personage than Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr. Mayhew made open profession of his departure from the received standard of Orthodoxy both in the pulpit and from the press, and of course must have had a congregation largely, if not fully, in sympathy with his avowed religious belief. He died in 1766.2
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