USA > Maine > York County > Wells > Historical discourse : delivered Oct. 29, 1851, at the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the First Congregational Church (the second in the state) in Wells, Maine > Part 1
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE; 150th ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH WELLS, MAINE CUSHING
Gc 974.102 W46c 1773054
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01085 8212
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historicaldiscou00cush 0
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE;
DELIVERED OCT. 29, 1851, AT THE
150th
One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary
OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE
First Congregational Church.
(THE SECOND IN THE STATE, ) IN
WELLS, MAINE
By REV. JAS. R. CUSHING.
PORTLAND: 1851.
1773054
DISCOURSE.
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Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth .- Ps. 45 : 16.
UCH is the prediction of the royal psalmist respect- ing the christian church. He commences the psalm with a glowing description of the excellency and dignity of the Messiah, her founder and head. "My heart," he says, "is in- diting a good matter," or more literally, boileth or bubbleth up a good word. "I speak of the things which I have made touch- ing the King. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer." "He was," says Bishop Horne, "full of the divine spirit, which inspired him with the good word or the glad tidings of salvation. The sacred fire enclosed in his heart, expanded itself within, till at length it broke forth with impetuosity to enlighten and revive mankind with the glorious predic- tion touching the King, the Messiah ; and this was uttered under the guidance of the spirit, as the pen is directed by the hand that holds it " Having spoken of the King, the head of the church, of his spiritual beauty and eloquence, for grace was poured into his lips; of victories and power over his enemies ; of his throne and sceptre; of his right- eousness, royal robes and palace, all glorious within, he introduces the church as his spouse. He describes her dress and appearance, foretells her future prosperity when nations would bring their choicest gifts and lay them at her feet. Next he sets forth her altars with her numerous atten- dants and the universal joy and gladness consequent upon the grand solemnization of her nuptials and the precious and abundant fruits of the union. "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth." He assures the spouse of the church an illus- trious and royal progeny of believers, who should become kings and priests unto God, and reign ever on earth as in
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reality the most honorable persons in any land. They were to reign, however, not so much by actually wielding the sceptre of dominion, or by wearing the badges, and sit- ting upon the throne of royalty, as by the broad and deep moral power of their principles. Through all ages a numer- ous succession of converts should arise out of this new and sacred relation between the Messiah and the church, whose in- fluence for the good of mankind should reach from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth; thus clearly indicating that the time would come when the church, how- ever much despised and oppressed, should, of her sons, fur- nish kings and rulers through all nations, as well as innum- erable heirs of an eternal kingdom in Heaven. That the true church is to become universal, is to possess the king- dom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heavens, is confirmed both by promises and prophecy. The last verse of the Psalm is in point : I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations : there- fore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever. This verse shows Dr. Scott, "That Christ and the church are im- mediately and. expressly intended throughout the Psalm. The language is peculiarly emphatical and can mean nothing less than all succeeding generations to the end of the earth, and likewise to endless ages in Heaven." And there can be no reasonable doubt but that this will be verified in the event. . To nothing else on earth are there such glorious and transcendent promises made as are made to the true church. And, oh, if these promises were only engraved upon her heart, as they are engraven upon the divine heart, what sor- row after a godly sort, what carefulness, yea, what clearing of themselves ; yea, what indignation ; yea, what fear, yea what vehement desire, yea what zeal, yea, what revenge would be wrought into the heart of all her members that in all respects they might approve themselves to be clear in every mat- ter, which should, in the least, stain her beauty, or mar her honor or retard her growth.
In the humble hope of stirring up your minds by way of
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remembrance, I have desired to speak to you, my brethren, on this occasion, with no ordinary depth of interest. Today we occupy an important position, a position which renders it peculiarly proper and important to reflect not only upon the love and fidelity of God to the church, but upon the days and years that are now numbered and finished. Today one hundred and fifty years ago, this church was organized and received from the hands of a small council composed of the ministers from Newbury, Dover, Portsmouth and York their first regularly ordained minister. But the fathers where are they ? One generation of them after another has passed away, and long, long before another century and a half has been numbered, we shall all have been laid by their side in the solemn silence of the grave. As you have most of you the history of this church, as drawn up by a much abler hand than mine, in your possession, there will be no necessity of my occupying your attention with anything more than an incidental allusion to the past, and that only as it shall be found necessary in order to illustrate and enforce the truth of the text. That the fathers have long since been numbered with the dead ; and that you, many of you their lineal descendants, are now here before God is proof that "instead of thy fathers shall be thy children." In pursuing the subject thus introduced I propose
I. In the first place to call your attention to the charac- ter of the fathers.
II. In the second place to notice the promise, "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy. children."
III. The advantages of having such an ancestry.
IV. The obligations resting upon us to hand down unim- paired the institutions and influences they have left us.
In the first place we are to notice the character of the fathers.
We cannot think as we should think, nor feel as we should feel, nor be what we should be, without frequent and pro- tracted communings with the characters that have lived before us, without serious reflection on the events that are
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already registered in the chronicles of time. It might be reasonably supposed that a godly ancestry would prove a great blessing to their descendants, were there no facts to demonstrate it. For they whom the Lord has delighted in, to love them, live not unto themselves, but for their generation and their posterity. It seems needless to say that the fathers. and founders of these Eastern states were pious men, who for conscience sake sought a residence in this land that they might enjoy the religious privileges which were denied them in the land of their nativity. About the year 1600 the coun- ties of Lincolnshire and Lancastershire in old England were visited with a revival of vital religion. Many of the fathers were partakers of its spiritual benefits. From that time they came to prize religion in its vitality above all carthily con- siderations Our ancestry were subjects of a revival of pure and undefiled religion. Their history is not enveloped in an absurd mythology nor lost in an extreme antiquity. We know the men and their communication. Their records are recent and authentic. We are familiar with the names of the adventurers by whom this land was discovered and set- tled, and by whom our civil and religious institutions were planted and defended. The places from which they came, the time when and the object for which they came are all on record. Plymouth, the place where the first per- manent European settlement was made, is a name familiar with the youngest of our common school children. They were a part of the congregation which, with Rev. John Robinson their pastor and an orthodox congregational minister, fled from England to Holland, in consequence of persecution in their native land. But after a residence of a few years in Ilolland, finding their children, whom they wished above all things to train up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, exposed to various temptations from the pernicious amusements by which they were surrounded, and that they might enjoy a larger religious liberty, they, after much prayer and mutual consultation, determined on a removal to this land. Unlike the settlers of South America, or the
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more recent settlers of California, gold was not their object. They were actuated by a pure and lofty religious interest. That they might escape from the errors of Rome and enjoy civil and religious liberty, train up their children in the way they should go, and for God and His church, and transmit to them and their posterity a pure religion and a scriptural mode of worship, they were willing to endure deprivation, hardship and exile. They were a reading and reflecting people, a people of pure morals, of rigid honesty, of patient, self-denying industry. They had great courage and strong faith. They were men of prayer. They believed in its effi- cacy, and hence they entered upon no enterprise except such as they could commend to heaven by prayer. They sanctified the holy sabbath. Even when famine stared them in the face, they felt it far safer to trust in the God of the sabbath than to engage in any questionable or doubtful expedients for a supply. They gathered their children and households about them for morning and evening prayers. This delightful exercise at an early period was almost uni- versal. So important was it viewed that those who neg- lected it had very little reputation for intelligence or charac- ter. This service proved a bond of union, a means of order and a source of knowledge. Besides family worship, they often assembled for mutual exhortation and encouragement. So fearful and anxious were they for the young that they often observed whole days of fasting and prayer, in which they pleaded with God to revive his work among their children. Believing that God was a covenant keeping God, that he would be true to his people, and had made the richest promises to them and their posterity, they entered into covenant with, and dedicated their children to him in the ordinance of baptism, thus binding themselves to instruct and govern them, that they might plead the more ear- nestly his promises of grace and mercy in their behalf. Oh if we could now look into the register kept in heaven might we not find thousands of prayers recorded against our names ! They catechised their children. They built school-
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houses for them and planted churches ; were prompt in pub- lic worship.' We have the solemn and explicit testimony of ministers, statesmen and historians that religion was the grand cause why these Eastern territories were first settled. They were also as eminently patriotic as they were religious. To prepare them to lay the foundations of many generations, like the Jews in Egypt, God subjected them to a course of the severest and most rigid discipline. To lay such founda- tions it required men sound in judgment, practical in wis- dom, and sincere in piety ; men who had courage and pa- tience, who could brave dangers, endure hardship ; men who could be content with coarse fare, coarse apparel, and rude dwellings. And just such were the fathers. They were the right sort of men and the right sort of women to engage in the work for which God had fitted them. They were in fact the only men on earth who could or would have made New England what it is. Would pagan or infidel parents have trained up such a race of children? Would papists have left to their descendants a family altar, a sanctified civil and religious liberty, and an unshackled press ? Would they have planted free schools, and trained the young to reading, and especially to the reading of the Bible ? Would they have instilled into the infant mind the rights of conscience and the principles of our holy religion ? Let the degraded condition of Mexico and all papal countries testify. The rejected, the wronged and oppressed Puritans were the only people under the sun who, except by miracle, could or would have reared up for their posterity such institutions as the fathers of this land have left for us. And the religion of the Puritans was the only religion given under heaven among men, which could have sustained them amidst such hard- ships, sacrifices and labors as they were called to endure while subduing, in the face of a most subtle, insidious and bloodthirsty foe, the mighty wilderness which spread all over this land. But God was their God and they were his ยท people. They sought his honor and he sought their welfare. In doctrine they were generally Calvinists, in church gov-
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ernment Congregationalists ; doctrine and government essen- tially republican and democratic. Beginning with the prin- ciples and genius of the gospel, they drew from them the fundamental elements of a free government, mild yet firm, individual yet general : a government modeled not for the aggrandisement of the few and the debasement of the many, but for the defence and perpetuity of the rights of all. Having secured these at an amazing cost of labor and time and blood and treasure, they have laid themselves down in death and gone to their rewards. We leave them to no- tice
II. Some of the advantages derived from such fathers.
It would be culpable in us to refer merely to farms cleared of the forest, to barns and dwelling houses erected by their hands and vessels constructed at their cost. These are of comparatively small moment. Far richer was the real inher- itance they left. Let the Egyptians glory in their pyra- mids, the Greeks in their sculpture, the Roman or Italian in cathedrals and paintings, we have a more glorious and en- during heritage from our ancestors. Our government, the union of these states, constitutes an enviable item in the grand legacy bequeathed to us by our fathers. To their careful study of the Bible, their faith in God, their humble piety, united with their noble patriotism we owe it that our government was formed after a divine model, rather than after the aristocracies of the old world. An elective govern- ment of necessity places all power with the body of the peo- ple. And here is its true and legitimate source. All offices of trust and profit are open to each individual who has the energy and enterprise to qualify himself for them. Taxation is nowhere allowed beyond what is necessary for the welfare of the great whole. The poor man's house is his castle, and except for crime no man may forcibly enter it unbidden. The president may no more enter it, except at the will of the owner, than the obscurest beggar. I would, but I am warned of the want of time, speak of many things which endear this legacy to us as of the greatest value.
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Next to our government our common school system should be recognized as an invaluable advantage. For even the preach- ing of the gospel is of comparatively little value among the ignorant and unenlightened people. Our missionaries can do little for the benefit of those to whom they bear the tid- ings of salvation, until they have poured the light of science into the mind on which they would operate. Under this admir- able system no child need be shut up in the more than iron bondage of ignorance. Says an able writer, "this system is simple in its structure, but uniform, universal and efficient in its operation. Its parallel is hardly to be found in the legis- lation of the earth." If the question be asked where does the great body of the people acquire its taste for reading, its general intelligence and talent for business, the answer is at hand. It is the peculiar glory of the fathers that this system was so early adopted, and it is immensely to the credit of their children that they are carrying it forward with increasing ef- ficiency.
The next grand bequest of the fathers I may mention with a just pride. I allude to a permanent and learned ministry. With a good government and an intelligent peo- ple the value of the ministry is greatly enhanced. I cannot so well say what I wish to say on this subject, as in the language of another. "The fathers established churches with their first settlement on these shores. They took their house- holds with them to the place of worship on each returning sabbath. They provided for the support of an able, devout and intelligent ministry. They expected that the priest's lips would teach knowledge. They waited at the gates of wis- dom with reverence and prayerfulness. The Word of God was read and expounded. llymns of praise were sung. Prayers werc offered, and the sacraments were administered. These services were renewed every sabbath, and from year to year. No one can tell in this state of being, how wide- ly extensive and how deeply operative is this system of di- vine ordinances. The conscience becomes enlightened, the understanding enlarged, the heart subdued and the passions
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restrained. Saints are confirmed and sinners are converted. Thousands of minds are strongly affected from sabbath to sab- bath. These means of knowlege and salvation, divinely or- dained and approved, do much to mould and stamp the char- ter of a people. And to the pure and salutary influence of this divine system were we subject in our early years. Much of our talent and moral virtue may be traced to this source. Nor should we think this item overrated if we could look into the actual condition of pagan lands. Truth is pure. Error is contaminating. Idolatry renders base and abject, but chris- tianity elevates."
Of the four original proprietors one was a clergyman-un- der the sentence of banishment, to be sure, but doubtless a good man. The Bible, the daily companion and counsellor of the Puritan, was left by the fathers to their children. This of itself was an invaluable legacy. I might speak of the example of the fathers also as a most precious bequest, for they being dead still speak, but I need not. The advantages derived from these are admirably summed up by the Hon. Abbot Lawrence, our present Minister to England. In a speech in Galway, Ireland, he says, "Give the people universal educa- tion-and I beg to be understood on this point, living as I do in a country that is. ruled by self government, a govern- ment of the people and from the people-our only security lies in universal education founded on religion. I would teach every man, woman and child to read and write; place the Bible in their hands and the people will take care of them."
III. We pass in the third place to the promise of God that in- stead of thy fathers shall be thy children. Has God kept this promise? We think he has and with wonderful fidelity. God is a covenant-keeping God. Blessings promised to the fathers do descend to their children. Says Moses to the Israelites, "Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers, that is, in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to love them, and he chose their seed after them." And again he said, "O that there were such an heart to fear me." God loved the fathers of New England,
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and hence he has suffered no weapon forced against them or their children to prosper. Now has God kept the promise, "Instead of thy fathers" etc. ? Let us look at it in the light of the New England church, and of this church. Here was formed, 150 years ago, the second church in this state. Now there are 225 of our own denomination, with about 1700 members and 166 pastors. Look over the church and see what God has wrought. Look at New England and see what God has done. Look over these United States, and see what God has done. Look at the great West. See there what God is doing. Wherever the pure New England element is found, wherever their descendants are found, there are found the school, the church and the Bible. And who are the leading men in these churches? Who are their ministers ? Search out their genealogy and you will find Puritan blood running in almost all their veins. In Western New York the leading element in church and state is a Puritan element. The hardy emi- grants from New England plunged into its dark, dense for- ests, and have in less than fifty years converted them into a fruitful field and planted them with churches of the living God. Go West, and there you will find the descendants of the Puritans the salt of that fertile land. Who have planted their colleges and who are their teachers ? New England men. Who are the teachers of Western children ? Turn to the records of the society recently formed for the supply of teachers at the West, and there you will find the name of many a New England daughter baptised in childhood into the sentiment of the fathers, and baptized in heart by the Holy Spirit. Go to California. You will find crime there in its most naked and deformed features. Where will you look for justice ? Where for those who are a terror to evil doers and the security of such as do well? You will find it in their vigilance com- mittee of a 1000 men, a majority of whom are the sons of the Puritans. Grant that technically their proceedings are illegal. In all my heart I believe that in that same illegal body there is concentrated more of stern justice and of good government than can be found in the nominal officers of state. Go to Ore-
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gon. Whose hands are rearing their houses of worship? Chil- dren of my past Sunday school are there. The sons of Maine are there, preaching the gospel and wielding the pen and the press. It is estimated that the lineal descendants of the Pu- ritans now amount to about four and a half millions. These are exerting an influence on every sea and all through our land. God has kept his promise. Instead of the fathers the children have been multiplied a 100 or a 1000 fold. Look at our church or rather at the town. Of the four original proprie- tors one was a clergyman, Rev. John Wheelwright, under cen- sure, to be sure, but a good man doubtless. It is now a little over 208 years since the first permanent settlement was made. During that whole period this part of the town has been des- titute of a ministry of our denomination but a fraction over 22 years. There was some irregularity attending the original church in the place. As the records have not come down to us, if any were kept, we are not able to specify what the irreg- ularity was. From 1664 to 1690 six ministers were employed, viz., Joseph Emerson, Jeremiah Hubbard, Robert Payne, John Bass, Percival Green and Richard Martin. At an early period a meetinghouse was built, and a parsonage also. It is proba- ble, says Mr. Greenleaf, that the people here were destitute of preaching for several years toward the close of the century. At that time almost every settlement in Maine was broken up by the savages, and that at Wells narrowly escaped. In 1701 the religious affairs of the town assumed a more distinct and pros- perous shape. On the 29th of October, 1701, the church was or- ganized and Mr. Samuel Emery ordained. His ministry con- tinued 24 years. The church adopted the baptismal form and covenant signed by the following male members : John Wheel- wright, William Sayer, Josiah Littlefield, Jon. Littlefield, Sam- uel Hill, Joseph Hill, Daniel Littlefield, Nath'l Clark, Thomas Boston, Nathaniel Clayes, Jas. Adams, and Jeremiah Storer. This was wholly discontinued about a year after the settlement of Mr. White. Although there appears to have been no special revival during his ministry, he received into full communion 56 members by profession and 13 by letter. . Dec. 15, 1725, Mr.
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Samuel Jefferds was ordained over the church, His ministry was evidently a spiritual ministry. He was a young man, being only 21 at the time of his settlement. The beginning of Mr. Jefferds' ministry was prosperous, and a considerable number were admitted to full communion within a year after his ordi- nation. From the year 1740-42, the period so memorable throughout all New England for the wonderful revivals with which almost all the churches were favored, the labors of Mr. Jef- ferds seem to have been greatly blessed. Within three months from Jan., 1741, 39 persons were admitted to the church, and during the whole season of awakening 71 persons were re- ceived to the church. Instead of the fathers were the chil- dren. From the known character of Mr. Jefferds it is to be presumed, says Mr. Greenleaf, they all gave satisfactory evidence of a change of heart. In 1750 the second church in Wells, now Kennebunk, was formed of members from this church resident there. Mr. Jefferds died at the age of 48, and the 26th year of his ministry, greatly lamented by all. After his decease Mr. Samuel Fayrweather was invited to settle with the people. He returned an affirmative an- swer, but owing to a strong minority against him the coun- cil called for the purpose declined ordaining him. February 27, 1754, Rev. Gideon Richardson was ordained over the church, but lived only four years.
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