USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Gardiner > One hundredth anniversary of the diocese of Maine, 1820-1920, Christ church, Gardiner, Maine, May thirtieth to June third > Part 7
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Meantime, the other historic parish of Maine was coming into life. By 1763 the settlement at what we now call Portland had so grown that a second church was thought necessary, and this congregation, being formed, elected that the services conducted in the building to which they had subscribed be the services of the Church of England. A year later, John Wiswall, a graduate of Harvard and a Congregational min-
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ister, decided to be ordained in England and was thereupon elected rector of the new parish. He sailed forthwith to England, was ordained in the English Church, and on May 7, 1765, was again in Portland, beginning his ten years' rectorship of the parish, which now received the name of St. Paul's. During the Revolution, St. Paul's fell on hard times, for Mr. Wiswall, being a Tory, sailed away, and the English, taking Portland, burned his church. In 1783 the scattered parishioners who remained loyal both to the Revolution and to the Prayer Book came together to rebuild the church. From this time, in successive buildings, the life of the parish has gone on continuously, though later the name of the church was changed to St. Stephen's.
II
Thus we reach the year 1820, when Bishop Griswold called upon the two parishes to organize the Diocese of Maine. On May 3, 1820, the rectors of the parishes in Gardiner and Portland with thirteen of their laymen met in Brunswick. Already the seat of Bowdoin College, Bruns- wick had an honourable history. To the south was the ancient settle- ment of Harpswell, and as one wanders among the graves of the old churchyard, now far south of the present town, and as one feels the mist from the sea sweep up over the sandy plains, one knows the pathos and the courage of the people who had transcended the winter cold, and who had fed upon the beauty of a rock-bound coast and noble rivers, -such as the Androscoggin, which at Brunswick goes foaming over high falls and then placidly makes its final journey to the sea. The next year Hawthorne and Longfellow were to become students at Bowdoin. No more significant spot could have been chosen for the birthplace of a Diocese, a town already rich in memories, gathering to itself intelli- gence and even genius in its little college which through its teachers and sons was to be distinguished in the life of the whole nation. Here Mrs. Stowe, the wife of a Professor in Bowdoin, was to write Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The Reverend Mr. Ten Broeck, the Rector of St. Paul's, Portland, and Mr. Robert H. Gardiner were elected deputies to the General Con- vention; and at a special convention in September the Reverend Mr. Olney, of Christ Church, Gardiner, was sent to the Convention of the
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Eastern Diocese in Newport, to ask and to obtain the consent of the Eastern Diocese (of which Alexander Viets Griswold was the Bishop) to take the Diocese of Maine under its protection.
In 1823 the Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society of Maine was founded. Evidently it did excellent work at once; for when Bishop Gris- wold visited Maine for the last time, at the Diocesan Convention of 1842 in Augusta, the two parishes of 1820 with their one hundred com- municants had grown to six with four hundred communicants. The new parishes were St. Mark's, Augusta; St. John's, Bangor ; Trinity, Saco; and St. Mark's, Williamsburgh. Meantime, Enimanuel Church, Westbrook, had been started and had lapsed.
When Bishop Griswold died in 1843, the Eastern Diocese was dis- solved, and the Diocese of Maine put itself under the pastoral care of Dr. Henshaw, who had just been elected Bishop of Rhode Island. In 1844 St. Paul's Church, Brunswick, was founded; and in 1847 St. James's, Milford; besides these, missions had been established at Wis- casset, Bath, Hallowell, Oldtown, Calais, and Eastport.
At length there came a great day for the struggling Diocese, October 4, 1847, when at St. Stephen's in Portland a special convention elected Dr. George Burgess to be the first Bishop of Maine. Before the month was over he had been consecrated, and for nearly nineteen years he gave himself to building up the Diocese. He died before I was born, but I feel as if I had known him, for I cannot remember when I did not hear his name spoken with enthusiastic reverence. My father was a student in Trinity College when Dr. Burgess was Rector of Christ Church, Hart- ford. Two years after Dr. Burgess became Bishop, my father was gradu- ated from the General Seminary, and followed the young bishop into his new field. At first in charge of Trinity Church, Saco, he then went farther east, and founded St. Peter's in Rockland and St. Thomas's in Camden. As I was preparing this record I untied a bundle of old letters which Bishop Burgess wrote in those days. One discovers in reading them the power of the fellowship of the Bishop, surrounding himself with a band of eager self-sacrificing young men. The Bishop, being the Rector of Christ Church, Gardiner, as well as the Diocesan, was con- stantly exchanging with his brethren. Nor was he leading them only with his profound spiritual self-forgetfulness, for to richness of charac-
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ter he added real learning and cultivation. A graduate of Brown Uni- versity, he had studied for two years in Germany, receiving not the hard technicalities of later German scholarship, but that rare flavour which Longfellow found, at the same time, in similar Wanderjahre and re- corded in his youthful and over-romantic Hyperion. The Bishop was, among other things, a poet, and even to-day, one knows by his portraits and letters and verses, what keenness, graciousness, and charm lay be- hind the smiling and attractive face. As a New England man, he knew what was in New England; and, though the Puritan distrust of the Prayer Book and of bishops still persisted, he won all who knew him, and was much more than the leader of one Communion. He loved the people of Maine, and they all loved him, and were proud of him.
The ten clergymen became seventeen, the seven parishes became nineteen, and the 560 communicants became 1598, during the nineteen years of Bishop Burgess's guidance. But no numbers can tell what such a man gives to a State. It was the kind of clergy whom he drew to Maine that, with his own life, made the Episcopal Church an imper- ishable gift to the people, whether they went to church or meeting- house. I can remember as a boy, when I spent my summers in Maine and sometimes longer periods, how people would speak of Dr. Edward Ballard in Brunswick. Eyes would fill with tears, there would be the glance of grateful memory, and then the testimony, " I did n't go to his church, but he is still, after all the years, my ideal of a gentleman." Dr. James Pratt, a famous fisherman, a wit, and a most tender friend. is part of the notable inheritance which makes Portland what it is to-day. So I might go on to speak of Dr. John Cotton Smith, later to achieve fame in New York; of the Bishop's brother, Alexander ; of William Armitage, later to do heroic service in the west; of Horatio South- gate, a missionary bishop ; and of John Franklin Spalding, who found his way into our Communion while studying at Bowdoin and was put in the care of one of the clergy by the wise Bishop and so found his vocation in the ministry. These men and others like them were mem- bers of a happy family to whom Bishop Burgess gave the fullness of his affectionate care and the companionship of his exceptional person- ality.
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III
Henry Adams Neely was the second Bishop of Maine, beginning his work in 1867. He had been an assistant minister of Trinity Church, New York, in charge of the prosperous congregation at Trinity Chapel, which later helped him in his work in Maine. He established St. Luke's Cathedral in Portland. He founded a school for boys in Presque Isle, and a school for girls in Augusta. He developed missionary work in Aroostook County. The thirty-two years of his episcopate were years when many people of Maine were going away to Boston, New York, and the west. The strength of many a parish throughout the land is due to the religious training which came from the Church in Maine; though the Diocese in these years made substantial progress, especially in the Aroostook, yet any statistics would only partially reveal what had been done. I remember Bishop Neely very well, for he confirmed me; I often heard him preach. With the strange recollection of a boy I seem to remember that his text was always from St. Paul's Epistles, generally from Colossians. He had a pleasant voice in singing, and was kind in giving people delight by his songs when he came to parish parties. I have heard that he was a remarkable huntsman. So the human element brought him into contact with his neighbours.
On Bishop Neely's death in 1899 the Reverend Robert Codman was elected Bishop of Maine, and gave his whole strength to the task until his death in 1915. He seemed at first not quite to understand the people and his training as a lawyer made his forensic sermons a little unsym- pathetic, but the firmly knit reasoning of these sermons told them at length how much he cared for those to whom he preached. Moreover, the amiable townsfolk who came to church on his visitations were per- plexed because he seemed to them to be always preaching on the Church and not on what they called the Gospel. But Maine needed to know the organic power of Christianity; and his affectionate solicitude for the welfare of their rectors, together with his unflinching service to all the people so far as he could reach them, made them understand what he was. He was entering into the possession of the heart of Maine when death overtook him.
In 1916 Bishop Benjamin Brewster, of Western Colorado, was elected
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to fill Bishop Codman's place. Knowing Bishop Brewster when he was a Colorado rector, and, later, his work in Utah and the Rocky Moun- tains, I appreciated how lovingly he would give himself to the far reaches of this great State. And because he was born and bred in Connecticut, I knew how thoroughly he would understand the excellent New Eng- land character which Maine always keeps warm under the frost of the northern winters. So I was glad for you and glad for him when he came to spend the rest of his strong life for Maine. I am sure that you will rejoice in the relationship, more and more, through the years.
IV
The historian Green believed that English history had been written too exclusively from the point of view of the kings, so he attempted a his- tory of the English people. It is well that we remember that the history of a diocese is only partly told in the records of its bishops. I should like, therefore, to speak of certain presbyters and laymen (in addition to those already mentioned) who have made the Diocese of Maine significant.
For fifty-five years Dr. Asa Dalton was a rector in Maine ; first, of St. John's, Bangor, and then of St. Stephen's, Portland. A diary of one of his parishioners in Bangor was put into my hands a few weeks ago, and there I read of the loyalty for all high purposes which his ser- mons and lectures kindled in the community. His long rectorship in Portland was also part of the history of the city, especially because of certain lectures which he was wont to deliver each winter, and which attracted many people outside his parochial responsibility. He was a staunch defender of the principles of the Reformation, and waged his controversy with a cheerful heart. He always lamented that the Cathe- dral was built within a block of St. Stephen's; for the two parishes could have served more people if they had been separated by a longer distance. Of course he was right. Those who knew him only in later years, when old age was upon him, can scarcely appreciate how large a part he played in the life of the city. It was not only his gifts as a preacher and lecturer, it was even more his faithfulness in seeking out the sick and the forlorn wherever they might be, which drew him into the affection of Portland.
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Another Rector of Bangor, the Reverend Edward Henry Newbegin, must be gratefully remembered by all who knew him. His parents had migrated from Maine in their early life, and he was born in Ohio. But his father's college was Bowdoin, and to Bowdoin the son was sent. Dur- ing his college years in Brunswick, though a Congregationalist, he was wont to go often to St. Paul's Church. Thus, through familiarity with the Prayer Book, and through certain friendships, he determined not only upon his ecclesiastical allegiance, but also upon his vocation. Per- haps some of his forbears in Maine had been taught by Jordan or Bailey, so that an inherited loyalty may have asserted itself. In any case, he became at last Rector of St. John's, Bangor. There his quick wit, his good judgment, his faithful ability, and his lovingkindness brought their due reward; and when all seemed before him, he died. He, too, is part of Maine for ever.
One other rectorship may be mentioned as typical. Perhaps the most important parish in Maine is St. Paul's, Brunswick. For several years the Reverend Harry Peirce Nichols was rector of it. His interest in young men, his ingenious ways of showing that interest, his direct preaching, and his Bible class made St. Paul's in his day a unique help both to the college and to the Church. Other rectors of St. Paul's, I know, have done a full share in maintaining its traditions; but of this particular rector- ship I happen to know at first hand, and I must bear my testimony.
I remember the widow and the daughter of a clergyman in Maine whose home through many years was the inspiration of a parish. Thither the youth, home from college, inevitably turned for a knowledge only less exact than that of his teachers, and for a breadth of vivid interest in life and letters far beyond any technical achievement. The Russian pedlar found there some one who could speak to him in his own tongue; and the new books of several languages were always on the table. While the daughter would compare notes on books and far-away places with the young enthusiast, the mother, in the beauty and dignity of old age, would send her wit in and out of the practical subjects of immediate concern to most of the people of the parish. This home, by far the most delightful in many miles, declared what Christian nurture could do, and by its piety and love was a winning missionary for the Church.
During recent decades more and more people have found in Maine
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a summer home. So there have come to be summer chapels up and down the coast. Sometimes these summer colonies have maintained parishes which minister to congregations throughout the year. Generous offer- ings are made in these holiday churches for the missionary work of the Diocese. But, even more, the gift of devoted lives is added to the long list of those who have found shelter in the Church in Maine. Not to speak of the living, who can think of St. Mary's-by-the-Sea at North East Harbour without recalling gratefully Bishop Doane, Dr. Huntington, Dr. Cornelius Smith, and Bishop Greer? Through happy summers their rich characters have been woven into the diocesan history. These names are suggestive of the fine types of clergy and laity worshipping at St. Saviour's, Bar Harbour; at St. Jude's, Seal Harbour; at St. Mary's, Fal- mouth Foreside ; at Trinity, York Harbour; at St. James's, Prout's Neck ; at Christ Church, Islesborough ; and many other places. Some of these summer churchmen are descendants of old Colonial stock living within the borders of what now is Maine; some are of the numerous exodus two or three generations ago. In them the Church in Maine is claiming once more the fruits of its inheritance.
I should like to speak of Dr. Daniel Goodwin, once a teacher at Bow- doin, later a Professor in the Philadelphia Divinity School; of Bishop Clark, who spent a small part of his brilliant life in Portland; of all the Gardiners past and present (especially the present); of Henry Ingalls; of James Bridge; of George E. B. Jackson ; of the Merrills ; of Chief Justice Fuller; of Dr. Kenneth Sills, now President of Bowdoin; of faithful missionaries and rectors like William Washburn, the hero of the Aroostook ; George Packard, the gentle friend ; Leverett Bradley, the brilliant preacher ; Frederick Rowse, musician and wit ; Charles Ogden, faithful and true; Henry Jones, all kindness to those who came to beau- tiful Camden, and a host of others. The best is never told in any human document, because only God knows the really great deeds of life, and only He can give the praise.
This Diocese, which now rounds out its first century, is a personality, with sorrow conquered, with honest achievement, with strong belief in its destiny, with faith in God's perpetual guidance. To God we give thanks for the past, and to Him we pray for love and wisdom, that those who serve the Church in Maine shall in turn make the Diocese a true servant to all the people.
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IN MEMORIAM PATRUM: 1820-1920 BY CHARLES F. LEE
Adown the slowly rising way By which we came our eyes we cast And from the hilltop of To-Day Salute the ever-living Past,- Living in man, and beast, and clod, In the Eternal Now of God.
Speak not of them as "dead and gone," The fathers of the former days, Who, though in Paradise, live on With us in works that sing their praise, -- Works that the common weal advance, And are our best inheritance.
Their silent voices fill the air With words of counsel and of cheer, As'mid the scenes they loved we fare. Alas for him so gross of ear He hears them not, whom naught delights But passing Babel sounds and sights!
Revere the Past, since child thou art Of all the ages from the prime. So shalt thou play a nobler part Upon the broadening stage of Time, And thus to grateful children leave More than the much thou didst receive.
Recharged with faith, in purpose strong, Through calm communion with the Past, On now the upward way along, Till, from some favoring height, at last We see afar, 'ncath radiant skies, The City of our God arise!
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ADDRESS OF WELCOME BY ROBERT HALLOWELL GARDINER
I T gives me very great pleasure to welcome you here to-day. Though for many years a wanderer, and still unable to spend all my days here, yet among you and your fathers, I first came to the conscious- ness of my personality, vague and incomplete as that consciousness was. In the little red schoolhouse on the corner of Kingsbury and Dresden streets, I found I had the possibility of a mind, and in the beauty of fields and trees and river and sky there dawned upon me the glimmer- ing of the perfect beauty my later years have found, while the dignity and saintliness of our first great Bishop Burgess stirred my soul. The deep and sacred associations which have centred in this city and its venerable Church for four generations before me were the inspiration of my early youth, preparing me for the ennobling influence God vouch- safed to send me in my later years. So with a full heart I thank you for your kindness in coming here to-day to join in our review of the past, in our hopes of a yet more useful future for Diocese and Parish, and to witness the renewal of our pledges of more complete devotion to the Master's cause.
Parish and Diocese seem but sinall matters in comparison with the life of the nation and the world. Yet, in a way, they have shared and reflected that life. A hundred years ago, the fundamental principle in Church and State in America, as in all the world, was individualism. For though, in its Book of Common Prayer and, above all, in its form of administering the two great corporate Sacraments of Baptism into the Church and of the Communion in the Life of its Head, the Church retained at least the germ of the Catholic and Apostolic conception of the Church as the Body of Christ, and so the means of uniting all men everywhere in one great brotherhood, yet it considered itself, in this country at any rate, as all the Churches did, practically only as a sect among sects, an agency by which individuals of similar tastes and sym- pathies might be helped to achieve an individual and selfish salvation. It had no vision of its function to proclaim the Gospel of Love, the funda- mental law of Christ's corporate and visible kingdom of peace and right- eousness and love among nations and classes and individuals. There was
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then little thought of the problems, social, industrial and international, which the world is now attempting to solve, -a vain and hopeless at- tempt, for it leaves out of consideration Christ's New Commandment of Love, the only hope for the permanent establishment of a satisfactory world order. The United States, finding its safety and hope and pride in its isolation, thought it could remain apart from the rest of the world, developing for itself its seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, indifferent to the social and political discontent still smouldering in Europe, though the Congress of Vienna thought it had stamped it out forever. Neither the United States nor Europe then realized, nor was it realized in the recent Treaty of Versailles, that mere force can never establish a stable equilibrium between the greedy and selfish ambitions of the nations.
It is true that, a hundred years ago, this country boasted itself to be the exponent of democracy, but it had no conception of the deep and permanent meaning of the word, nor had the Church, impotent by rea- son of its divisions, any consciousness of its responsibility for the mes- sage of the only basis on which a democracy, fit to live, can endure. The word stood then for unrestrained individualism, untrammelled compe- tition, the possibility for any boy to outstrip his fellows in place and power and wealth, to become President or to amass a great fortune. There was much talk of freedom, but as yet little profound recognition of the perfect freedom which is to be found only in sharing with Christ, indwelling in His Church, the service of the community, the nation, the world. There was little practical vision then of the eternal truth that the individual finds himself completely only in absolute surrender to something outside of himself, as the true lover to his beloved, and that the only real and permanent independence is to be free from the chains of self, to lose self in glad, free service of God and humanity. And the nation thought then, as we have allowed politicians to repre- sent us as thinking still, that freedom lies in selfish isolation, just as the new principle of the self-determination of peoples, though it in- volves the surrender by one nation of its unjust domination of another, still means scarcely more than that the peoples are set free to enter the race for self-aggrandizement.
And in social and industrial questions, we are still hampered by con-
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ceptions which have proved totally inadequate to establish and promote the common weal. Our generation, the generation of us who are passing away from the world's activities, has been a period of great combina- tions, but of combinations as yet devoid, at least consciously, though God may be guiding them to fulfil His purposes, of any principle which is not hostile to any true democracy. Trusts and Labor Unions have thought primarily of the strengthening of their own power, the advance- ment of their own interests, and popular uprisings against them have seldom gone to the root of the matter. The principle that every man is entitled to get all he can for himself has been left substantially un- touched, for sporadic attempts to check profiteering and the devices of income and inheritance taxes are, in effect, only attempts by the many to wrest from the few the gains the existing system permits. They are, at best, mere palliatives, not cures or preventives, of social disease. And so with Labor. It has extorted higher wages and shorter hours by strikes or the threats of strikes, which would cause not merely the upsetting of business but widespread suffering for the necessities of life. There has been as yet little deep consideration of the problem of the fair distribu- tion of the earnings of business ability and of manual labor, of the source of capital or of its right to continue. The Unions insist on their right to the brute force of strikes, regardless of consequences to others, and Cap- ital still hopes that strikes may be made unlawful, so that Labor may be forced to continue to serve. Never was there a greater need or oppor- tunity to proclaim the New Commandment of Love.
This parish was, at its beginning, an attempt to establish permanently the old order of society and the old conception of the Episcopal Church as the Church of the privileged. You will forgive me for speaking of my ancestors, but it would be absurd to ignore them, for the history of Parish and Diocese cannot be told without them. For more than one hundred and seventy years, one of the chief desires of our hearts has been the prosperity of the Church in this city and in the State, and I pray that, as long as our name lasts, we may be eager to do all that in us lies to strengthen and extend its influence. As soon as, in 1754, my grand- father's grandfather, Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, acquired individual title to the territory now included in Gardiner, West Gardiner, and part of Farmingdale, he set about establishing the Church. His dream was of
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