USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Essex > Two centuries of church history : celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the organization of the Congregational church & parish in Essex, Mass., August 19-22, 1883 > Part 3
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*History of Essex. p. 124.
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eighth were buried in the Atlantic, victims of the passage, and yet in England no general indignation rebuked the enor- mity. Massachusetts unremittingly opposed the introduction of slaves. In 1705 the General Court imposed a tax upon those who brought slaves into the market, of so much for every slave sold.' But England persisted in bringing them, and landing them upon our shores. But why did our fathers buy them? The only apparent reason is that of humanity or necessity. If they had not taken them into their families by purchase, they might have been left to perish in our streets, or subjected to all the horrors of another passage over the Atlantic, to be sold to some other country. If they had been unprovided for upon our shores, they must have perished ; for they were as incapable of providing for themselves as the most neglected and ignorant child. Their condition, therefore, was at once improved, as soon as they came into the possession of our fathers. They dwelt under the same roof; their wants were all cared for; they worked shoulder to shoulder with their masters in the field; sat by the same fire with the children, were taken to church with them on the Sabbath, and instructed in the great truths of Christianity, and when our fathers were made free, they were made free with them. There is nothing in these facts to diminish aught of England's guilt in the enormities of the slave-trade; but they certainly furnish some apology for our fathers in giving a home to those who were already bondmen."
This town, under the lead of its ministers and religious men, was early identified with the temperance movement.
As early as in 1825 it was voted "that the selectmen allow no bills for liquor on the highway." On the 16th of July, 1829, the first public address upon this subject in this town, was delivered in the meeting house of this church, by William C. Goodell, of Boston. The speaker announced his topic as follows: "Ardent spirits ought to be banished from the land. What ought to be done can be done." The result of the
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lecture was the formation, then and there, of the first tem- perance society. It was called the "Essex Temperance Soci- ety on the principle of total abstinence," and the constitution was drawn up by the lecturer and the pastor of this church.
1 Seven persons joined the society and signed the pledge that evening. Their names were Winthrop Low, Samuel Burnham, John Choate, John Perkins, Jonathan Eveleth, Francis Burn- ham, David Choate. Rev. Mr. Crowell's name was added shortly afterward.
It is pleasant to add that, from the first, whenever the ques- tion of licensing the sale of intoxicating liquor has come up in the annual meetings of the town, it has received a decided negative, up to, and including, the present year.
I have said nothing at all directly dear friends, about the influence of this church in distinctively religious and ecclesi- astial affairs. Had it been my object to give a connected and comprehensive history of the society, that would have been the principal topic. And it would have been a very rich one. Not that in this or in any of the things that I have mentioned, this church has been perfect. Not that she has not committed errors of judgment and made mistakes. There are things in the past that we may wish were different. But in the main, by the grace of God, she has made a noble record, not only in the development and preservation of piety and the graces of the Christian life here at home: but also in her contributions to Christian literature ( especially in the works of Wise and Cleaveland ) ; in her not inconsiderable influence in founding and aiding other churches in this county ; in her collections and prayers for foreign missions; and in the noble men she has sent out in such considerable numbers, to become earnest and able preachers of Jesus Christ.
These things you will hear about from others. But after all that I have said, and after all that they shall say has been uttered, to the praise of God, and to the credit of our noble ancestry, the very richest and best of these past two centu-
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ries will still be unuttered and unutterable. These things that we can see and speak of, these visible and tangible results, are glorious, and we thank God for them; but who can esti- mate the invisible influences and the untraceable forces that have been operating in all these years through the instrumen- tality of this church and her pastors! The best work accom- plished by any church and in any pastorate consists in the thought that is stimulated, the spiritual impressions that are imparted, the hopes and desires that are enkindled in the soul. These lead the soul heavenward. And who shall number, to- day the souls that have been cheered and guided in their . earthly journey, by these influences, and that have been won to Christ and made heirs of everlasting life through the instrumen- tality of this ancient church? We may seem to see them now, a joyous and blessed band, in the great company of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb. Our fathers and brethren, our neighbors and kindred, our acquaintances and friends are there. And do they not see us? Yea we must believe that this sanctuary is still sacred to them, and that these memories that we are re- viving are their memories. They are with us to-day, uniting in our thanksgiving and joining in our praises to that God and that Christ who have made this sacred church to be to so many, as the very gate of heaven. God grant that we may triumph as they have triumphed, over all the hinderances and temptations and doubts that assail us, and enter with them at last through this gate, and into the blessedness of that heav- enly land.
Finally, as we stand, to-day, upon the vantage-ground of this two hundredth anniversary, we can look forward as well as backward. Someone has said that to know any leading characteristic virtue of those from whom we have descended is not only to be influenced by it, but it is to be put under an obligation to imitate it, and keep it alive. Mediæval knights committed to memory the records of noble acts in their
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families, that they might maintain an equally high standard by their own chivalric deeds. So we are put upon our honor to maintain the high principles and to imitate the noble achievements of those who have gone before us. This anni- versary should be full of measureless edification and inspira- tion for us. It should arouse us to new earnestness and activity. We should feel as never before the vast opportuni- ties and solemn responsibilities that are ours. As we thank God for the past we should pray to him for the future. New problems confront us. The world has marvellously changed since the days of our fathers. The ends of the earth are given into our keeping. Shall we keep them for Jesus ? The most diverse race elements, with the utmost variety of relig- ious and political and social prejudices, are pouring into our own nation. Shall the gospel permeate these masses? Shall it be the light of the world, the salt to save the people from corruption and decay? With us rests the issue. Intemper- ance and licensiousness, those old enemies, still stalk about the land. Shall we kill them with the sword of law and of love? Mammon is as greedy as ever. Worldliness still draws its millions from the worship and service of God. It is ours to apply the gospel with its quickening and purifying and sav- ing power to all within the reach of our influence; and by the wonderful discoveries of modern times, God has brought the whole world within our influence. The church of to-day needs the entire energy and complete consecration of all its members. As we remember the deeds of our ancestors let us then, not be rendered proud and self satisfied by them, but let us be spurred on to new faithfulness to the trusts that de- volve upon us. Let us determine to show the same spirit in meeting our responsibilities that they showed in meeting theirs. If we have different difficulties to contend with and different problems to solve, let us rejoice that we have the same gospel to work with, and the same Saviour for our helper and friend. Let us ever be true to that Saviour. Let us ever
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be loyal to this church and its covenant. Let us ever main- tain these same grand old evangelical doctrines, that in the past have brought forth, in abundance, such goodly fruitage. Let us contribute liberally and gladly to the support of the gospel, upon which rest the eternal hopes of man. Let us be personally interested and faithful to all these responsibilities ; and then that light, which so long ago was kindled on this sacred hill, shall continue to shine, to warm and to bless men. Long after we have left the scenes of earth and gone to join that great company of the redeemed, we shall be remem- bered, as we remember our ancestors to-day ; and to God the Father and to the Lord Jesus shall be the praise and the glory forever. Amen.
1753323
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE
BY PROF. E. P. CROWELL.
While towns and colleges are making special observance of the fiftieth anniversary of their foundation, and the whole country has ever since 1874 been passing through a series of centennial celebrations of momentous political events, - reaching this very year that of the treaty of peace with Great Britain and the disbanding of the Revolutionary Army,-we certainly, Respected Friends, have no occasion to apologize for this assembling to-day to pay such regard as we may to an occurrence of so much greater antiquity, the planting in this community, two centuries ago, of this church and parish, which have been living on, the centre and spring of the religious and almost of the secular life of this people during these two hundred years.
You do not need to be reminded that it is now ninety years and more since the frame of the present church edifice (which is the fourth), with its oaken posts, was raised on the spot, which forty years earlier than that, had, at the erection of the third church building, been consecrated to the worship of God, and which has, ever since 1752, been known as meeting- house hill.
As lately as 1864 the location and ground-plan of the second meeting-house, erected in 1718, near the site of the present town pound, were marked perfectly by the underpinning stones,
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remaining for all that intervening period a memorial-like the twelve stones taken out of Jordan, and pitched in Gilgal- of the place where were manifested the power and grace of the Lord toward us in the earlier years of the eighteenth cen- tury.
But for the event we are now commemorating our thoughts must ascend past all these intermediate stages of this paro- chial history, beyond everything that has taken place in the life of the nation and the province, to a point within the limits of the earliest colonial period, when, in the first meeting- . house, built three years before, at the North End, near the site of the house and barns of Mr. Nehemiah Dodge, this church was constituted, and the Rev. John Wise ordained its pastor on the 12th of August ( O. s. ) in the year 1683.
The mere fact that our church and parish have reached so venerable an age is however the least of our reasons for ob- serving this bi-centennial. These special services in honor of this birthday are made in the highest degree becoming be- cause of the qualities and the doings of the ministers and the laymen of this Religious Society in all the past. Be- cause of its vigorous life and its beneficient career in every generation from the beginning until now, it is meet and our bounden duty to consider these years of many generations, as one epoch now closes, and we stand on the threshold of another.
Through tradition and the printed page* you are well ac- quainted with this chapter of church and parish history, and there is no need, if there were time, of my undertaking to tell the whole story, full of interest as it is. I only ask you to review with me three passages in this history, which per- haps best illustrate what these twin institutions have been, the changes they have passed through and the work they
*History of the Town of Essex from 1634 to 1868 by the late Rev. Robert Crowell D. D., Pastor of the Congregational Church in Essex. Essex : Published by the Town. 186S.
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have done, and which may therefore most suitably be recalled to our thoughts, and accounted most worthy of permanent remembrance.
I. The first of these passages is, of course, that which describes the circumstances of the founding of this Ecclesi- astical body.
If then we inquire what it was which brought about the establishment of this church and parish, we cannot fail to find the real cause and the explanation in the character of the people of Chebacco-their piety, their intelligence, and their force of will combined.
You recollect that the great current of emigration from England, beginning in 1620 and bringing to these shores some twenty thousand souls, had nearly ceased to flow about forty years before the time to which we are now turning our attention ; and though not a few of the first settlers were still living, a large proportion of the inhabitants here were now, in 1683, Englishmen of the second generation, many of them, to be sure, born in the mother country. Their fathers had 'come bringing them from various parts of the ancestral land ; from Bristol in the southwest, on the banks of the Avon, through which Wyckliffe's ashes had flowed to the sea; from the flourishing cathedral city of Norwich, the capital of Nor- folk county on the east coast, where in 1580 (as our highest authority on the history of Congregationalism has told us,) by the prompting and under the guidance of Robert Browne, the first church in modern days had been formed, which was intelligently Congregational in its platform and processes ; from old Ipswich also, the capital of Suffolk county, noted as the birth-place of Cardinal Wolsey and for its Grammar School, revived by him, though founded in the reign of Edward the Fourth ; and from various smaller villages in its vicinity, such as Groton, the old home of Governor Winthrop.
And these new-world founders were of the very choicest fruit of the Protestant reformation. The dwellers in Chebacco
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between the years 1676 and 1683 were thus of the bone and sinew of a town of which Edward Johnson, an author of the seventeenth century, in his History of New England, said : "The peopling of Ipswich is by men of good rank and quality, many of them having the revenue of large lands in England, before they came to this country;" and of which Cotton Mather, in 1638, declared : "Here was a renowned church consisting of such illuminated christians, that their pastors, in the exercise of their ministry, might think that they had to do, not so much with disciples as with judges."
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These Chebacco residents were the sons and daughters of the original occupants of a territory, of which, in common with all those settled in Massachusetts Bay, a recent writer has remarked that "there was in the early emigration to this region, besides the educated Puritan clergymen, quite another admixture than that of learning, a sturdy yeomanry, led hither by the desire to better its condition and create a new religi- ous world around it."
These our ancestors of two hundred years ago were among the freemen of a body politic, of which, what Rev. William" Stoughton said in his election sermon in 1668 of all New England was preeminently true, that "God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain into this wilderness."
The men and women who proposed to themselves the founding of this church, belonged to a municipality where already for forty-one years there had been a free school, and a standing town rule that the selectmen should see that no child fail to be taught reading and the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country; where for thirty-two years there had been an endowed Grammar School, at which some thirty-five boys had already been fitted for Harvard College.
Not only had the town of Ipswich, of which Chebacco was an integral part, thus laid a foundation for the intelligence and virtue of all within its borders, as well as reproduced the
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local civil institutions of the old country and aided in setting up the fabric of a State government, but it was now, accord- ing to the historian Palfrey, "the second town in the colony in importance, having a larger degree of talent and intelligence than almost any other," and in King Philip's war, (i.e. 1675) "one of the centres of intelligence, of whose church several of the officers and many of the troops, who did good service; were members." And it was also now experiencing to the full the stimulating and developing effect of the political agitations of all that formative period.
In the contests between the crown and the colony over the civil rights claimed by the latter, which had been almost con- tinually going on throughout the reigns of the first and second Charles, intermitted only during the few years of the ascendancy of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and which were to terminate with the unrighteous taking away of the colonial charter, the very next year, 1684, by Charles the second, the citizens of this as well as of the other parts of Ipswich were as deeply interested spectators or participants, as any of you were in the war of the rebellion, or in the state and Federal election campaigns which have taken place since. And largely by these experiences were their mental powers made acute, their love of liberty inflamed, their manhood moulded and disciplined.
The church at Ipswich centre which was now about a half- century old, founded in May, 1634, the year of the settlement of Chebacco, had been first under the ministrations of Rev. Nathaniel Ward of Cambridge University and formerly a lawyer in England, of so acute and vigorous a mind, and so learned in jurisprudence that he was appointed by the civil authorities to compose the earliest statute code of the colony -the one hundred fundamental laws styled the "Body of Liberties"-which Palfrey calls a great monument of his wis- dom and learning, and which he says will compare favorably with other works of its class in any age.
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Its ministers, during the childhood and youth of those in Chebacco now in mature life, had been the colleagues John Norton of the same English University, also distinguished for learning and for his stirring eloquence, who took a leading part in the synod which constructed the Cambridge platform of faith and discipline in 1648, and Nathaniel Rogers, also an English University man, whom Cotton Mather, in 1702, called the Holy and regarded as "one of the greatest divines that ever set foot upon the American strand."
For nearly the thirty years (prior to 1683) during which the Chebacco people who were to embark in this new enter- prise had been on the stage of active life, the religious welfare of Ipswich had been nominally cared for by three spiritual guides at once. One of them, the venerable Thomas Cobbet, educated at Oxford, driven for conscience sake to the new world, who through his talents, erudition and skill as a writer and theologian had stood in the foremost rank of New Eng- land divines, was now, to be sure, at the infirm age of seventy- five.
The second, John Rogers, a son of Rev. Nathaniel, was rather in the position of an assistant, having charge of the Thursday lecture, and chiefly absorbed in his other profession as the principal physician of the town-a scholar and a sci- entist, elected President of Harvard College, and inaugu- rated to that office, it so happened, the very day this Chebacco church was constituted. But the third of these colleagues in the pastoral office, the Rev. William Hubbard, born in Eng- land, but a graduate of Harvard, regarded by a contemporary historian as "certainly for many years the most eminent min- ister in the county of Essex, equal to any in the Province for learning and candor, and superior to all his contemporaries as a writer," described from other contemporary allusions "as a stately, affable and accomplished gentleman, the ideal coun- try pastor in a highly intellectual community," was precisely at this juncture in the mature vigor of manhood, and active
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and influential in all the ecclesiastical affairs of the whole town.
These statements may be sufficient to remind us what were the antecedents and the political training, and what the educa- tional and religious privileges of our fathers, who took into serious consideration the spiritual interests and needs of this growing and thriving precinct of Ipswich, at their first meet- ing for consultation on that subject, at the house of William Cogswell, a little north of the site of Mr. Albert Cogswell's, in February, 1677.
Their character, then, admirably qualified them for enter- ing on this great and good work. But who actually took the initiative in it? Was it these associate pastors at the centre? By no manner of means. We discover not a trace of their ever holding preaching services in this remote but populous part of the town, or of their taking any measures for the es- tablishment of stated religious worship here, or of their even encouraging any movement in that direction. There seems to have been on their part a most singular inaction and an indifference to the spiritual welfare of this large part of their flock, all the more strange because Prince's Christian History tells us that "a gradual decline of religion and morals grew very visible and threatening as early as 1670 and was gener- ally complained of and bitterly bewailed by the pious; and yet much more in 1680." Was it really indifference? Felt's History of Ipswich makes the unconsciously sarcastic state- ment that in 1677 "Rev. Mr. Hubbard was tried, in having a part of his people at Chebacco much engaged in endeavors to have Mr. Jeremiah Shepard for their minister; his chief objection being that Mr. Shepard had not become a member of any church." Indeed! Then he did have other objec- tions, also. And this little piece of evidence is sufficient to prove that Mr. Hubbard's position as to this project was not one of support or approval.
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When the historian Palfrey gives us some insight into his
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character in the declaration that "Hubbard took no generous part in the great political struggles of his time, and that the tone of his History of New England is courtly and timid;" when we hear not a syllable of remonstrance from this Ipswich minister in unison with the outspoken opposition of his fellow- townsmen to Governor Andros' tyranny in 1687, and learn that he was appointed by that governor the acting president of Harvard College in 1688, we cannot but infer that such a man sided with his parishioners at the centre, in. positive opposition to the loss of so much taxable property, from his parish, as would be caused by the creation of another parish. at Chebacco.
At any rate it is plain that without the counsel or sanction, without the help or sympathy of their spiritual advisers, the movement for the founding of this church and parish began with the residents of this village themselves, from their own deep sense of the value and the need of better religious privi- leges for all in their community. Recall their own statement of the reasons for their acting in this matter, and of the motive which inspired them.
The record reads : "At this [the first] meeting, the inhab- itants of Chebacco, considering the great straits they were in for want of the means of grace among themselves ;" and : "that we might obtain the ministry of the word among ourselves, which is our heart's desire ;" and further : "that we might be eased of our long and tiresome Sabbath days' journeys to the place of public worship in our town : for some hundreds of our inhabitants do not nor with convenience can attend the public worship at town ; and of so considerable a number of the inhabitants as are amongst us, scarce fifty persons the year throughout do attend the public worship of God on the Sabbath days." And their first petition to the General Court. June 1, 1677, mentions, as a reason for having liberty to build a meeting house, their desire "to prevent the profanation of the Sabbath, they living so remote."
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Several things in their movement are worthy of particular notice, for a full appreciation of what these men were and what they accomplished.
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