USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 65
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While in attendance upon the general convention of 1859, in Rich- mond, Virginia, he was unexpectedly elected missionary bishop of the south-west, with jurisdiction in Arkansas, the Indian Territory, Arizona and New Mexico. To the office of bishop he was consecrated in St. Paul's church, Richmond, on the 23rd of October, 1859, the consecra- tors being the Right Reverend Drs. Meade, McIlvaine, Whittingham, De Lancey, Polk, Elliott, Cobbs and Atkinson. Bishop Lay proceeded at once to the field assigned him, and in the summer following, removed with his family to Fort Smith, Arkansas. His election took place in the midst of the John Brown raid, one of the most notable events in the history of the country, and conducive to one of the most momentous in the history of the world; and the smouldering fires of civil strife burst forth, just as Bishop Lay was about to go to New Mexico to establish a mission there. Progress had been made in building up the church in Arkansas, when the war brought all to a standstill.
During the years of strife the Bishop was variously engaged in Arkan- sas and also in Louisiana, acting for Bishop Polk, who had been made a general in the confederate army, he having received a military educa- tion at West Point. At one time Bishop Lay was overtaken by the advance of the federal troops, imprisoned for a time, and then held on parole. When released, at the request of Bishop Elliott, he consented to act as quasi missionary bishop to the army of the Tennessee. In this capacity he went through the siege of Atlanta. Although he held no
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commission, General Hood received him at headquarters, and he and the Rev. Dr. Quintard, the most efficient of army chaplains, now bishop of Tennessee, messed with the chief of staff, General Shoup, since a well known clergyman.
When the war ended, at the meeting of the general convention, in October, 1865, at New York, Bishop Atkinson and Bishop Lay presented themselves, and after consultation, resumed their places in the House of Bishops. Of the transactions of this memorable convention with refer- ence to a restoration of the organic integrity of the church, which had been destroyed by the war, an historical sketch is appearing at the date of this writing in the columns of the Churchman, prepared by Bishop Lay himself; but those at all familiar with the occurrences must admire the admirable abnegation which has prevented his claiming his just share of the merit of effecting that most important measure, the reunion of the two sections of the divided church. The time, however, will come when neither his own modesty, nor the fear on the part of others of violating a sensibility that shrinks from public praise, shall deprive him of that meed which is justly his due not only from an united church but a united nation.
After returning to Arkansas, Bishop Lay responded to the invitations of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in company with other American bishops, attended the first Lambeth conference. It is probable that it was during this visit to England that he received those impressions of the value of the cathedral system which have urged him to attempt its intro- duction into his own diocese, and which, indeed, have affected his views of episcopal administration. After his return, he was called to a new field of labor, and influenced by the consideration that he no longer had the physical strength necessary for the arduous life of a missionary bishop, he accepted the invitation, and on the 1st of April, 1869, he was translated and removed to the diocese of Easton-a diocese then lately erected in Maryland. Over this diocese he still presides, but with what acceptability and efficiency, it must be left to the future biographer to relate. Although of late years his impaired health has diminished his physical ability, it has in no degree abated his zeal to discharge the duties of his office; and it is likely his labors and his life will end together. During his diocesan episcopate his efforts, aside from the general admin- istration of the affairs of the church, have been directed to the revival of the old and extinct parishes of this peninsula and the restoration of the ruinous and deserted churches and chapels, as well as to the organiza- tion and building of new; to the securing adequate support for the active
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clergy in those places where the church was most feeble; to the making some regular provision for the aged and infirm ministers, and for the widows and orphans of clergymen; and to the introduction of a cathedral system, at the episcopal seat, with its bishop's church under his immedi- ate care, its schools, its charities and body of clerical officers. In the church at large his labors have been abundant, conspicuous and useful. In the general convention the more important matters in which he has been engaged have been before the committees on divorce, on the discipline of the laity; on the lectionary and on the enrichment of the liturgy. He has served for many years as a trustee of the general clergy relief fund, the object of which enlists his warmest interest and sympathy.
Bishop Lay is commonly ranked among the conservative churchmen; in doctrine, condemning alike the revival of the superstitious beliefs of a mediæval church, and the critical rationalizing spirit of the modern christianity; in forms, shunning the extravagancies of the ritualists and the bald plainness of the evangelicals. But he yields to no high churchman in magnifying his office of bishop.
Being characteristically a man of labor in his sacred calling, small opportunity is given him, even if he possess the inclination, for merely contemplative pursuits. But his scholarship, both in the divinities and the humanities, is thought to be respectable. Time can be found for the cultivation of letters only so far as to keep him abreast of the age, and to give efficiency to his work as a chief pastor. Nevertheless he has not been wholly debarred from the pleasure of literary production. Regarded as an eloquent and impressive preacher, his talents in this regard have been in much requisition, and many of his sermons have been printed; among which were those delivered at the consecrations of Bishops Robertson, Lyman and Seymour, and at the death of his much loved friend and relative, Bishop Atkinson. His voluntary publications, so to speak, have been all of a popular character, and are these:
Letters to a Man Bewildered Among Many Councillors,-1 vol. Dana.
Tracts for Missionary Use,-2 vols. Dana.
Studies in the Church,-1 vol. Pott, Ycung & Co.
He has also been a frequent contributor to the Churchman, writing especially in behalf of a provision for aged and infirm clergymen and for the widows and orphans of clergymen.
Bishop Lay is a man of family. On the 13th of May, 1847, he mar- ried Miss Eliza Withers, daughter of Roger B. and Mary T. Atkinson, of Lunenburg county, Virginia, and a niece of the late Bishop Atkinson,
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of North Carolina. He has four children: Henry C. Lay, Jr., a civil engineer; George W. Lay, a candidate for holy orders; Beirne Lay, of the class of '84 at Yale; and a daughter, Louisa Lay.1 The bishop resides at Easton, in no robust health, in a house of his own, the diocese having hitherto failed to provide one for its chief pastor, though he has been able to press this measure, without incurring any imputation of personal motive.
Bishop Lay, after a lingering illness, died at the Church Home in Baltimore City on Friday, September 17, 1885. His funeral was held the following Monday, September 20, in Easton, attended by the Rt. Rev. Alfred Lee, D.D., Bishop of Delaware and the Rt. Rev. William Paret, D.D., Bishop of Maryland, by several visiting Clergymen from other Dioceses, and by almost all his own Clergy and many persons from adjoining Parishes. The body rested in Trinity Cathedral, thence was taken to Christ Church, where the services were held and interred in Spring Hill Cemetery.
The following minute on the death of Bishop Lay was passed by the Board of Managers of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, 22 Bible House, New York, December 8, 1885.
The Board of Managers desire to record upon their minutes their pro- found and unaffected sorrow at the removal from his earthly labors and from their Missionary Councils, of the Rt. Reverend Father in God, Henry Champlin Lay, the first Bishop of Easton. They mourn in his departure the loss of one who, in his personal character, as well as in his official position, was truly a successor of the Apostles. Endowed with talents which in any calling would have placed him among the foremost of men, of persuasive eloquence which made him equally happy and effective in addressing the most cultured or the most unlettered audience, of wise judgment, of primitive piety, of saintly abnegation of self, he was truly a Father to his Clergy, a pattern of Godliness, and a bright example to the Church of God. A Missionary Bishop in fact, though not in name, he bravely held aloft the Standard of the Cross and of the Church in one of our feeblest Dioceses, counting it his highest joy to spend and be spent in the cause of Christ. His published writings, full of wise counsels, marked by sound and vigorous thought, instinct with
1 The memoranda from which this meagre biographical sketch has been com- piled were supplied by a member of Bishop Lay's family; but all responsibility for their use rests with the writer exclusively. More might have been said of this gentleman but for the fear of offending a modesty which shrinks from public commendation. Long may that event be deferred which shall give freedom to the pen of eulogy.
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a deep spirituality, adorned by a poetic imagination and the grace of a chaste and attractive style, are a benefaction to the Church which will ever be remembered with gratitude. While we cannot but deplore that his voice will no more be heard in our deliberations, that his benig- nant presence and saintly influence will be missed from our gatherings, we offer our hearty thanks to Almighty God for the good example of His departed servant, together with our earnest prayers that we may be incited to greater diligence in making His way known upon earth; His saving health among all nations.
Signed H. C. POTTER THOMAS F. DAVIES.
Eulogy upon the Right Reverend Henry C. Lay, by his successor, the Right Reverend William Forbes Adams, in his first address made to the Convention of the Diocese of Easton 1888.
My dear Brethren:
There are certain occasions and points of time, when the mind, as instinctively turns to the past as the eye of the traveller to the receding shore and the faces and forms of the loved ones he is leaving behind him. Today, assembled together for the first time for several years in completed organization, you too doubtless turn your eyes to that past, which, in spite of all the force of our affections, recedes perpetually farther and farther from our view. You cannot but recall the voice and presence of him, chosen of God to be the first Bishop of this young Dio- cese; and in recalling, deeply feel, it is a grave and shadow of death, which separates now from then. He rises before us today, in image, who was, we confidently believe, in very truth, lifted up on high, to his pre-appointed mansion, in our Father's House, while his eye was yet undimmed, and the force of every intellectual power unabated, and before time had chilled the ardor of his earlier years. The unenlightened reason of mankind stands confounded and amazed beside many of the graves our hands must dig and fill; yea, even to the Christian it seems not enough to know that he has planted hope, and that the grave he leaves behind him is big with immortality. Still persistently the ques- tions come; why was he taken? How can we spare him? and there are no replies. But whom does God need to be leader and guide in His Church on earth? Upon whom does He depend? Surely upon none of us. He teaches this lesson year by year. One after another He takes from our front line. They are the chiefs of the tribes, the chosen of Israel, men from the shoulder upward higher than their brethren. They are the very ones upon whom we have leaned. They were our light and strength and consolation. Their example was our chief stimu- lus to action, their approval, alas! too nearly our all sufficient reward. In the greater moments of our times that appeared to some portentous of prodigious ills, and to others pregnant of a greater good, we have seemed to see the very Bride Herself, the Church of the Living God, a
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dependent upon their calm well balanced powers. But in a moment, even as a dream, when one waketh, they are gone! these "Chariots of Israel and horsemen thereof." It is then, in that wisdom, child of a great sorrow and a greater amazement, that we learn to cast all our life for help upon the alone abiding strength and steadfast might of Him who says: Lo! I am with you Always. You, my dear Brethren, have much to be thankful for. The time indeed of Bishop Lay's labors among you seems short to us, who count otherwise than God, for he reckons not by the cycles of the Sun, by the Divine help and by the cooperation of a faithful band of Clergy and Laity, he put somewhat beyond the region and conditions of experiment this, your adventure of courageous Faith. He laid a strong and solid foundation fairly upon historic lines; not so broad as to be beyond the Holy Scriptures and our venerable Creeds; not yet too narrow as to abridge our liberties and diminish our inheri- tance. There is not a stone but is blasted from the ancient quarries, not one but is held hard and fast in the embrace of well tempered mor- tar, upon this foundation his spiritual sons may safely build for all time to come.
This my Dear Brethren, he has left for our instructions, for our profit, and for your pardonable pride, the exemplary touch and finished skill of a master's hand upon all the works he wrought for God and for His Church in your young Diocese. His people loved him; they revere his memory. His works continue to follow him; and may God give to us, who yet remain, the Spirit of Wisdom and of Ghostly Strength, to follow him as he followed Christ.
REV. HENRY MICHAEL MASON, D.D.
On July 1, 1837, the Rev. Henry M. Mason of Salem, New Jersey, accepted a call by the vestry of St. Peters Parish, located in Easton in October, 1837, and was duly installed in the parish over which he pre- sided for over thirty years. This gentleman, whose memory is still green in the minds of many yet living, who reverence his piety and learn- ing, was a native of the Island of Barbados and born November 22, 1801. His father was Mr. Henry Mason, an English sugar planter of that Island, who died in 1807, and his widow and several young children removed to Philadelphia, where his maternal uncle, Mr. Samuel Sharpe, became his guardian, and placed him at school at the University of Pennsylvania, and later he entered the General Theological Seminary at New York. He was admitted to the Diaconite by Bishop White, June 8, 1823, and probably a year later he was raised to the Priesthood. For over thirty years, with a zeal that never cooled, and a fidelity that never faltered, he performed the humble duties of a priest of a rural parish-the life of the parish was his life. He became throughly identi-
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fied with it. The event which most conspicuously marks his career was the erection of the massive stone edifice, Christ Church, and the stone rectory adjacent thereto, which stand as a testimonial of his unselfish devotion, and a monument to his revered memory. He represented the Diocese of Maryland in the General convention continuously from 1841 up to the time of his sudden death, which occurred April 25, 1868. Bishop Whittingham said of him:
He was respected throughout the whole Church as one of her most soundly learned theologians; as a scholar he had few equals. As a thoroughly balanced Anglican Divine hardly any; as a faithful pastor, a charitable and large hearted Christian gentleman, he presented through his long rectorship of more than thirty years, a steadily consistent example to his flock, which may well deplore its bereavement with no common grief.
THOMAS BEASTON
"His faith, in some nice tenets might be wrong: His life, I'm sure, was in the right."
ABRAHAM COWLEY.
1806-1875
On the morning of the twelfth of the month of October, 1875, the life went quietly out of a man who, though holding no conspicuous place, was in this community widely and only favorably known, and who, though occupying an humble station in the world's regard, was pos- sessed of qualities of such exceptional excellence that they would have adorned the highest. Reference is made to THOMAS BEASTON, the hatter, who followed his calling for forty years in the town of Easton, and who lived all this time without merited shame and without just reproach, even in the midst of those from whom he differed upon sub- jects concerning which most of men are the least tolerant.
He was born in Dorchester county in February, 1806, and was there- fore in his seventieth year at the time of his demise. He had, during all these years the usual allotment of joy, and sorrow, and though at times inclined to believe his share of pain, mental and physical, was greater than that of most others, upon a review of all the time he had spent upon the earth, he was wont to declare, in his last days, that upon the whole with him happiness had predominated; that after all abate- ments had been made for the suffering he had endured, his life had been worth living; and that the philosophy which takes a pessimistic view of the present order of things, and which he at one time felt inclined to
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adopt, is false and malign. His parents were poor and plain people. Better than any patrimony they transmitted to him the best elements of their own characters. From a pious mother he derived his religious susceptibilities; from a strong-minded father he inherited his intellectual vigor 'and acuteness; from both his self-respect, his independence, his integrity and his purity. In his earliest years he was subjected to the stern discipline of privation and labor, which instituted in him habits of economy and industry. These were confirmed during an apprentice- ship to the craft of hatting, and were not lost during a long life spent in the pursuit of his adopted calling. After the termination of the time of his indentures, he followed his trade assiduously, wandering, as was the custom with journeymen hatters in those days, from place to place. The opportunity thus offered for seeing the world, for observing men and things, was not lost upon a mind so alert and so impressible as his. What to others was but a kind of vagabondage, was to him a school of experience, and a means of instruction. This "tramping" of this young journeyman hatter was to him what foreign and domestic travel is to the young student, just from college, before he settles himself down to his profession. In the year 1829 Thomas Beaston became a resident of Easton, in this county, where he married in 1830, and where he re- mained until his death. He continued to follow the mechanical part of his trade until, by reason of the monopolies of the large factories, it ceased to be remunerative. He was then constrained to adopt the mer- cantile part-selling the work of others. He was enabled through life to earn a decent and modest subsistence, and when the end came, to leave a comfortable support for his aged companion. Of him it can be said with truth, that when he wrought with his hands, he worked his conscience in with his wares, and that when he engaged in trade he never parted with his integrity when he sold his goods.
As the son of poor people living in a remote and secluded part of the country, and born before the benefits of free public instruction had been brought to every man's door, Thomas Beaston received but small instruction in letters. A few months of schooling during the inter- mission to labor afforded by winter, was all the tuition he ever obtained from teachers. Whatever progress in learning he subsequently made was through his own unaided efforts. His father, from evidences still existing, considering his station in life, and the opportunities for gratify- ing his inclinations, seems to have been a man of singular inquisitiveness and thirst for knowledge. In all likelihood he possessed a correspond- ing aptitude for its acquisition. His intellectual traits he transmitted
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with increased distinctness, to his son, who ever manifested the greatest eagerness in intellectual pursuits, and no inconsiderable power in assimi- lating what he derived from extrinsic sources. The few books that were within his reach were read with avidity, and when in after life he was able to make choice of what he should read it was noticeable that his books were always of that solid and sterling value which is duly esti- mated by minds of a higher order only. Very early his mind was directed towards theology-first to theology as a divine rule of practice, then to theology as a system of dogma, and later to theology as a branch of phil- osophy, but never to theology as a profession. Being thoroughly im- bued with the spirit of rationalism, yet in his very nature intensely pietistic, in the conflict, hereafter to be noticed, which took place within his own breast between the suggestions of his reason, and the inspira- tions of his faith, his mind at one time became beclouded, and he sank into a condition of religious despair, and intellectual indifference. From this condition of gloom however he emerged, and found himself occupy- ing higher ground, and breathing a purer atmosphere. Theology and philosophy continued to be his delight. Warburton's Divine Legation and Lock's Essay upon the Understanding and books of like calibre were his reading. The poor hatter even tackled Cudworth and Hobbes, probably with little satisfaction to himself, on account of his lack of previous culture and training. In subsequent years the works of Dr. Channing, Martineau, and other liberals were his delight. In his last days he strove to master the new systems of philosophy taught by Comte and Herbert Spencer. Of these he was candid enough to say there was much that he did not understand, and of that which he was able to comprehend, he was bold enough to presume to be the critic. He was exceedingly fond of disputation upon philosophical questions, and upon fundamental theology. In argument he was ready, and astute. He was always formidable, and was seldom beaten by his antagonist. His fondness for discussion often led him to adopt the side opposed to his convictions, for the sake of testing his own and his opponent's powers and skill, in logical fence. His greatest delight was to meet in a conflict of words with the ministers of the churches, whose orthodoxy he was too pleased to shock with the discharges of his rationalistic, and humani- tarian batteries. Of science he knew but little, and could hardly be interested in any branch of it, except Astronomy. Here the vastness of the spaces, the immensities of the distances, the enormousness of the masses, the prodigious lengths of the cycles of time, the inconceivable- ness of the numbers, the grandeur of the forces, of which this science
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takes cognizance, appealed directly to his imagination and directly to his feelings of reverence. The starry heavens were to him the roof of a temple, in which he stood an awful worshiper. The character of his mind was essentially metaphysical. He loved to speculate upon that which he conceived to lie beneath and behind the obvious and tangible. The limitations of solid fact were always an embarrassment to him in his intellectual excursions. He loved to expatiate, without the restrictions of the senses, and the restraints of experience. Here was the vice of his mental character, but it was a vice handed down to him from a previous generation. Like most uneducated men he was deluded by words. He was essentially a realist, according to the schoolmen, believing, or arguing as if he believed, that behind the abstract terms he employed there existed an actual something, not cognizable by the perceptions, but by the understanding only. He loved to make nice distinctions, and to discover minute differences in the meaning of the words used in debate. He would argue with an adversary for an hour to discover in the end that there was only a difference in the meaning of the terms used by each. The importance he attached to words was doubtless owing to an early reverence for the phraseology of the sacred canon, and to the listening to the disputations and verbal criticisms of shallow theologians -to these causes taken in connection with his want of scholastic training, a want which was a source of ever recurring regret. He was a man of singular independence and firmness. He formed his opinions with de- liberation, and maintained them with steadiness. That they were con- trary to the current beliefs, was rather an argument for their retention, than a reason for their rejection. He always misdoubted what was commonly received. He thought the truth lay most frequently with the minority. Opposition confirmed instead of shaking him. This antagonism to popular opinions in two particulars, exposed him to op- probrium and injury. For his independence of thought upon religious matters, he incurred the name of deist or infidel, with all which that implies. For his similar independence of thought in politics, at the breaking out of the war of the rebellion, he was subjected to the loss of friends and the impairment of his business interests by the desertion of old customers. To his honor be it spoken that, though a lifelong Demo- crat, he was loyal to his country in her time of trial, and that he never concealed his sentiments even when silence would have been politic, nor wavered in his fidelity when recreance to principle would have met with its reward in immunity from proscription and in enhancement of his gains.
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