USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Middleborough > Two hundredth anniversary of the First Congregational church in Middleboro, Mass > Part 4
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These, with West Barnstable, 1616, formed in another land before embarking for these shores, form the elder sisters, in southeastern Massachusetts, of this church.
There are a few churches in Essex and Middlesex counties, and a sprinkling in central and western Massachusetts, which antedate our church by from thirty to forty years, but in a total aggregation of 579 churches, only 31 are older than this church.
Our sister church at Acushnet is two years younger, and the church at Plympton one year younger, than our own.
Of course, the list of the ancient churches of old Massachu- setts and of the old Colony could be doubled, at least, if we might technically include the First and Second churches of Boston, the First churches of Salem, Plymouth, Beverly, Hingham, with a score of others, perhaps, which are now known as Unitarian societies, though of course originally evangelical Congregational churches.
I have spoken of the ancient character of this church. Age
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is not always venerable or worthy. Gray hairs are not always to be venerated, nor the hoary head a crown of glory. Still, " that which is true, as God lives, is permanent."
That which is worthful, beloved, survives, is permanent and long-lasting. Age that is not premature, and in appear- ance only, and "age that carries not with it the sting of out- raged honor," the legacy of a disgraceful and dishonored past ; age that is sweet and gracious, mellow and hopeful, freighted with holy memories and consoling and heavenly hopes; age that has served and wrought zealously, and now rests and waits, though serving still, is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The dear old saints, how we love and dote upon them, as they fade from view and lie down to their long sleep ! And the dear old churches, we do well to speak them fair; for theirs is a noble record of three, five, eight or more genera- rations, taught, quiekened, consoled, uplifted by worship and the Word ; of innumerable souls redeemed, justified, sanctified, renewed; of thousands of men and women brought from nature's darkness into the light of God's reconciled face, and the " white beauty of a saved and saintly life."
The beauteous and (may I not say?) sublime record of this church of yours is not unknown or unwritten here on earth, but it is brightly and indelibly inscribed in the Lamb's fair book of life.
Ah, who can compute, weigh, or duly estimate the magni- tude and value of the blessing and beatitude which have come to this community by means of the planting of this church and her beautiful bevy of estimable daughters in this delightful countryside ?
Truly we may say of our mother church, she has sent forth her boughs unto the sea and her branches unto the river.
Rich beyond words, in blessing, this church has nourished in holy and scriptural living eight generations of men and women, fashioned in the image of the Invisible. And the worth of such an engine or mighty agent of benediction, of moral and spiritual quickening, is simply inexpressible.
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MR. HANAFORD'S ADDRESS
This church has had, pre-eminently, four cardinal constitu- ents of a true, model, and ideal church : stability, progress, ideal, and ritual. The stability of the church has been due, under the blessing of God, to the faithful ministries of the learned and devoted men who have never failed in declaring the unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ, having so gently and wisely, eloquently and honorably preached the Word that all harmful schisms and heresies were avoided, and the church was enabled to pursue the tenor of its way unmolested by Soeinian schismaties or hypercalvinistic zealots. Sound alike in the days of eighteenth century formalism and nineteenth century heterodoxy of thought, this church has enjoyed a remarkable stability.
Truly conservative, she has welcomed new ideas and methods, while not wholly losing her hold upon the ancient landmarks and time-honored truths and usages of the Pilgrim churches of Britain and New England. With the great author (under the Finisher of Faith) of Congregationalism, John Robinson, this church, like him, has ever believed that God has yet more light to break forth for ns from his most holy Word ; so has welcomed to its arms the revivalism of a Thacher and Whitefield, and the earnest evangelism of a Sawyer, in modern times, as well as the tender, persuasive, tranquil, earnest, paternal ministry of a Putnam and a Conant. This church has been progressive, never retrogressive, and though highly conservative, as rural parishes are likely to be, has always followed in the path of the car of progress. If she has not led she has sedately and with calm eagerness followed the leadings of Providence in all her varied fortunes and vicissitudes.
A grand and gracious ideal, based upon the ideas of the Fathers of the New England faith and polity, has been yours ; for have you not ever sought to be a true church of Jesus, a light in this dark world, a helping hand outstretched, hold- ing forth the word of life?
Then, too (for I must not enlarge), you have had a simple ritual, having by no means neglected the form of sound words,
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but growing into an increasing appreciation of the value of set forms of worship, and religious song and anthems, in aid- ing to enforce noble truths and cheer and uplift the hearts of dying, needy men.
To which I should add, as the complement and crown of the whole, that bond of heavenly charity which pervades and har- monizes all, that supreme grace of the Christian dispensation, - love, manifest in works of social reform, in ministrations to the poor and suffering, in health to the sick, and light to them that sit in darkness, and the opening of the prison-house to them that are bound.
According to the creed of the Apostolic Fathers, you have believed in the Holy Catholic Church and have been one in miniature. Every Pilgrim church is. Not that which consists in masses and indulgences, in genuflexions and papal infalli- bility, but that which consists in faith and progress, devotion, love. In the work of soul-winning and character-building, in the work of fitting and preparing stones which shall be incor- porated one day in the shining, majestic temple of God in the heavenly places, those servants of the great Master Builder who wrought and worshiped here these twenty decades, here almost within hearing of the "breaking waves " that lave the beach at Plymouth, rejoiced to spend their uneventful days - days not without their usefulness, not without honor, profit, and beatitude. Peace was theirs; joy inexpressible and full of glory. My bosom burns, my heart thrills, as I ponder the days of yore ; as I call to recollection the fathers and their lot, their trials, their tears, their treasured hopes, their loyalty to God, to conscience, and their duty as God gave them to see it.
I think of those children of the Puritan age and movement, of those men of iron, of heroic and saintly stock, soldiers, saints, martyrs, and apostles of righteousness, who planted here the public school and the Christian church. Our fathers believed with all their heart in the book of God, in the voice of God, in the day of God, in the church and the house of God.
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Your ancestors followed in their shining footprints. Robin- son and Brewster were followed by the Mathers, the Fullers, the Thachers, the Putnams of our later day ; a noble army of confessors. You of the generations now before me are, I trust and am happy to believe, worthy successors of most worthy and admirable sires. I congratulate you most heartily on your heritage, and I pray God that you may remain, for a score of decades yet to come (I speak of our institution now), what I found you, a most heterogeneous yet homogeneous and harmo- nions people, loyal to leader, faithful and efficient in labors ; a rare people, adhering unflinchingly to the faith of Christian orthodoxy, and intent upon the glory of Christ, whose you are and whom you serve.
I dream, and lo ! there passes before my view a reverend procession of weak and erring yet godly and soul-seeking men. At the head of the little group I note a goodly form, with the attire of the seventeenth century Puritan. It is Sam- uel Fuller, the first pastor of this church. His eye is glad and bright, and he walks with measured tread, as if to the music of the heavenly choirs, and his hand points upward. He is followed by one whose glance falls often to the earth, and whose step seems to falter, while he walks a little aside from the others, who are trooping by, as if ashamed or afraid of joining in this company, but at last he passes nearer his pred- ecessor, and with head bowed low presses on. He seems to whisper, " Saved, yet so as by fire," and I seem to see, as through a haze, a crown upon his brow, but there are no jewels there, and I think I hear him weeping, as he cries, " Not one soul with which to greet Him : I kiss the feet of Re- deeming Grace, but O, my wasted life, my lost opportunity !" He passes on and is lost to view, and then follows the godly, industrious Thacher, with crown studded thickly with stars and glittering jewels, and after him the lovely and useful Conant, and the scholarly, able and efficient Barker.
After him, with jeweled crowns, come the saintly Paine and the faithful Eaton. Then comes an alert and erect but lithe
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form, with beaming eve and rapid step ; it is the gentle, urbane, and admirable Father Putnam. His crown has many stars, and his brow shines with a mellow radiance, as he glides quickly forward in the glittering train. But who is this that sturdily presses after? It is Sawyer, the reaper ; and I soon hear sower and reaper rejoicing together over a multitude of gathered sheaves.
This man of God, pastor and evangelist, on whom many souls among us look back as to their deliverer, is followed by two more saintly and faithful winners of souls, and as they sweep onward I hear them shouting to their noble predecessors, " My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horse- men thereof ! Lo, we come, we come ! "
And as the little throng press skyward, I hear (nor is it all a dream) a host of angelic voices chanting, "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever."
"'T is finished ; all is finished, - Their fight with death and sin; Fling open wide the golden gates, And let the victors in !"
Be it ours, brethren of the ministry, and yours, my pred- ecessor and successor, to follow in their train. Be it our happy privilege to receive with devoutest gratitude the legacy of faith, love, and unselfish devotion to us by them transmitted, and labor to assert and develop the principles by which they nobly wrought, and from which they received strength to live sub- limely, and die in the triumphs of faith.
I have seen a book whose title is, " A Century of Dishonor." We come together to-day to celebrate two centuries of honor : of honorable history ; of useful, noble toils ; of gracious achieve- ments and soul-uplifting hopes ; of hopes, clasping which the workers have been cheered and spurred on to fresh undertak- ings for Christ and his Church, and the dying have descended into the dark-bright vale of death's latest shadow, leaning on the arm of their beloved Shepherd, whose word to us is not
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alone, "Feed my sheep : tend my lambs," but, "Be ye faith- ful unto death, and when I, the chief Shepherd, shall appear, I will give ye a crown of glory which fadeth not away !" Cherishing most ardently, and rejoicing heartily in your two centuries of traditions, trials, triumphs, go on, my brethren, pastor Stearns and people, and make the living present worthy of the glorious past. The past, certainly, is secure. The present we note, and are glad to honor. The future is in your hands, to mold and fashion it how you will.
When your church was born (comparatively speaking), science and theology were in swaddling-bands, in their infancy. Amazing changes have taken place in two hundred years. Weeks and months and years, generations and epochs have rolled away. Science is a new creature, as vastly different from what it was in the seventeenth century, theoretically and practically, as the Cathedral of St. Paul's is different from the barn-like structures which served our fathers as churches.
In the realm of religious progress what has God wrought ! Never before was the Bible the book it is to-day. Never were its treasures so highly prized. Never were its depths and hights so thoroughly explored. Never before was evangelical Christianity so puissant, so invincible.
When this church was organized, only thirty-four years, perhaps, had passed since the great plague in London ; John Bunyan had been dead but a few years, while Shakspere was almost as near to the founders of this church in time as Wesley is to us. Milton's "Paradise Lost" is just issued from the press, mayhap. Some thirty-eight years must roll along before the " Father of his Country " will see the light. John- son and Goldsmith and Edmund Burke, the great poets and statesmen of the eighteenth century, have not yet been born. One hundred and forty years must roll away before steam-cars will be in fashion : and one hundred and seventy-five or more before the wonders of the telegraph, the phonograph, and the electric light and railway will dawn upon a not very greatly astonished world.
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Philosophies and literatures have suffered change. Inter- pretations of Scripture have been modified. Science has ceased to be a pigmy, and is now a sturdy colossus, striding across a narrow world. We no longer say in our credo that the Lord made the world in six days of twelve or twenty-four hours each, but we say the universe was "evolved," though in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
But in all and through all God works and rules, and well may we sing with Tennyson,
" Our little systems have their day ; They have their day and cease to be."
Yet our God changes not, and truth changes not. We move nervously from side to side, to and fro, and see truth from different sides, but she remains the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Remembering Jefferson's aphorism, "We are respon- sible to God, not for the rightness, but for the uprightness of our opinions," let us search, nevertheless, for truth as for hidden pearls, for if we seek for her with all our hearts she will be found of us.
With one fond look backward I will close these somewhat extended observations. My thought carries me back to the gorgeous October days of 1885. I am standing where I stand to-night, and looking down or up into - not a sea of faces, but a scattered throng of humble worshipers. There were a goodly number of persons here that day whom we miss to-night. I cannot speak their names, but there were Eddys and Pratts, there were Thomases and Thompsons, Woods and Bryants, there were Westons, and many others of fragrant memory. As I recal their names, and their faces rise before me, I seem to hear the words of the Cambridge poet : -
" Then, though oft deprest and lonely, All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember, only,
Such as these have lived and died."
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MR. HANAFORD'S ADDRESS
Surviving friends, who still hold a lofty place on memory's walls, I call you to emulate the virtues of those who, being dead, yet speak. I summon you so to set your house in order that when Life's dream is exchanged for Eternity's reality, and the little tale of earthly years is all told, we may meet the saintly souls who beckon to us from the islands of the blessed, saying, "Come up higher !" Till then, let us follow Christ as did they. Let us never forsake the Pilgrim faith, the Trinity, and the cross of Jesus Christ, but, clinging fast to the glorious doctrines of the reformed churches, let us enter upon our third century as a church with bright hopes and flam- ing zeal. Let the aged say, "The past was grand and sweet. The future we will leave with God, in the trustful assurance that God's spirit will guide his church in days to come as of yore." Let the young face futurity with strong hopes and brave re- solve. Let all renew, or record, their vows to live "out and out " for God. So shall you honor the memory of your illus- trious predecessors, perpetuate the venerable institution be- queathed to you by them, and set forward the common King- dom of our Savior Christ.
A word last of all to the religiously irresolute or the un- saved in this great audience. I want to say to each one of you, " as a dying man to dying men," the Master has need of you. This church has need of you. Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once to the fountain of cleansing, the waters of Siloa that go softly. What Napoleon said to his soldiers at the pyramids, that, slightly changed, I may say to you : Eight generations look down upon you. See that through you the Kingdom of God receive no detriment. Seek your souls' salvation. Seek then to be polished stones in the temple of life, granite, not soapstone or shale. Take sides with the Spirit against the flesh. Receive the death of Christ for the remission and putting away of your sins, and the pure, lovely, loving life of Christ to help you overcome the power of sin. Then shall you be laureled conquerors, and more than conquerors, when from the bleeding and kingly hands of the
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Captain of salvation you receive a crown of righteousness, and enter the gates of light, where the saints await our coming.
ยท
At the conclusion of Mr. Hanaford's address the choir sang an old fugue-tune, "The New Jerusalem" (Ingalls) ; the con- gregation united in the hymn, "In the Cross of Christ I glory " (Bowring ), to the tune "Rathbun "; the benediction was pronounced by Rev. N. T. Dyer, and the congregation was dismissed with an organ postlude, "Sanctus," from Farm- er's Mass in B flat.
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" THE PILGRIM MOTHERS"
MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 1894
ON Monday, at two o'clock, a goodly throng met in the meeting-house. The organist, Miss Wood, rendered Scotson Clark's " Grand Offertoire in G."
The pastor, having been asked to preside, introduced Rev. B. F. Hamilton, D. D., of Roxbury, who is connected by marriage with the First Church. Dr. Hamilton read from Psalm 90, and offered prayer.
Mrs. G. W. Stearns then read the following ode, composed for the occasion by the pastor : -
THE PILGRIM MOTHERS
Out of the storied past, Like pictures down from their frames, Methinks I see the mothers come Who bore the Pilgrim names.
Mothers and maidens too, Tho' little they asked of fame, Were equally brave with our honored sires ; Be then their praise the same.
Think ye they loved not home Because they sailed over the sea? Think ye they yearned to roam, Crusaders gay to be?
Speak, from the " Mayflower's " deck, O damsel with brimming eyes - Fared ye o'er the unfriendly deep To find where fortune lies?
What means that stifled sigh, O matron in Plymouth's home? Have ye not lotus found at last, O'er leagnes of ocean foam?
Think'st thou amid her toils Dreams not thy daughter more Than she e'er confest of some English nest With hawthorn at its door?
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O, how they missed the kin They had left beyond the main, The while they struggled with hardships sore, Famine and toil and pain !
Many a dear one drooped, To rest in an unmarked grave. But the living had need of comfort and care, And women must be brave.
Many a cottage wall In an Old Colony town Could tell a tale of gentle hearts That ached, but kept grief down.
Sweet words of love and faith, To husband, brother, child, Cheered these to act a valiant part, Their fears and doubts beguiled.
Let laurel grace man's brow ; Grant him his meed of praise; The deeds of our Pilgrim sires may well Inspire the poet's lays.
Robinson, Fuller, White, And others are honored names ; But the angels have sung what earth has not - The praise of the Pilgrim dames.
Peal, then, thou sweet-voiced bell ! Answer, ye whispering pines ! Proclaim that bright as the father's the fame Of the Pilgrim mother shines.
The choir next sang a hymn, "Two Hundred Years Ago," adapted from Joseph Flint, with music by Bartholomew Brown. This hymn was first sung at a celebration in Plymouth, in 1820.
Thomas Weston
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ORATION BY THOMAS WESTON
THE PRESIDENT OF THE DAY. - It is well known to all of you who are thronged in this meeting-house to share to-day in celebrating our two hundredth birthday, that our long member- ship list includes not a few persons who have won for them- selves and for us an enviable renown. Some of these persons have ere this been numbered with the saints in glory everlast- ing. Many of their descendants are with us to-day. There is one whose father was for more than threescore years an active member of our church, and his ancestors for four generations previous to his own were influential members and constant attendants on its worship, serving the Master. He united with us at the age of eighteen years, and, though elsewhere resident, worthily sustains the name of his illustrious ancestors. I have the honor to present one already known by most of you, the orator of the day, Mr. Thomas Weston, of Boston.
ORATION
BY THOMAS WESTON
" Thou shalt remember the way the Lord thy God has led thee these forty years." So begins the earliest record of the or- ganization of this church, whose two hundredth anniversary we commemorate to-day. One hundred years ago, the eminent pas- tor of this church, the Rev. Joseph Barker, embodied the prom- inent events in its formation in a century sermon preached from the church edifice then standing upon yonder foundation. Fifty years later in this pulpit, Rev. Dr. Putnam, of blessed memory, gathered the most interesting events connected with its history, together with some account of the lives and char- acters of its successive pastors and prominent members, in two exhaustive sermons, which were published in the volume containing your church history.1 The revival of historical
1 Book of the First Church of Christ in Middleboro, 1852. This volume was written by Zechariah Eddy, one of the ablest lawyers in southeastern Massachusetts. He was recognized as authority on all matters relating to the Pilgrims and the history and polity of the Congregational churches.
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studies in our own time has added but little else to our knowledge of the early history of this ancient and honored church.
We have come together, brethren and friends, not so much for the purpose of bringing additional facts to our knowledge in its interesting history, but, in the words of its founders, to remember the way that the Lord our God led them and has led us, their successors in the work of their hands, during these two hundred years. Here in this meeting-house, and the others that preceded it, the members of this church have come for more than seven generations to worship. Here they made "the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad for them, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose "; here for generations they came for that spiritual culture and growth that made them the strong men and women they were ; here they found consolation in the privations, the sufferings, and the sorrows they underwent; here they obtained that fortitude and courage by which they so successfully met the responsibilities of those early days and years of hardship and trial : here were developed those lives of Christian faith and holy living the memory of which has for so many genera- tions been such a benediction upon the lives of their chil- dren ; here were molded and developed those characters which made our fathers men of enterprise, of perseverance, of in- tegrity, -the ideal representatives of our heroic age; and here, too, they came and went out, one after another, each suc- cessively in his turn coming to his grave "like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season." It is for us to-day, as we re- view the scenes and the traditions connected with these men, not only to catch, if we may, some inspiration from their lives and their characters, a stronger love and trust in the God that they so loved and trusted, that our lives may be nobler and sweeter to meet the great responsibilities of our day and generation, but also to see how the story of this church and the lives of its members have flowed into the great stream of the history of the nation,
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ORATION BY THOMAS WESTON
As its life passes before us in review, we may possibly regret that its earliest records are lost and its later ones are so meager, and vet the records of such a church, of such ministers, of such members, are never lost ; they are engraven upon successive generations of men and women, whose influence is felt, not only in the life of such a church as this, but in the life of the nation as they have both grown from infancy to maturity, and must continue to the end of time, only to be fully known when the great books are opened on high.
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