USA > New Hampshire > Belknap County > Sanbornton > Addresses and proceedings at the centennial anniversary of the Congregational Church, in Sanbornton, N.H., November 12 and 13, 1871 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
3
18
He might by the wonderful power of His love, reach our dead souls and restore us to life immortal !
Dear friends, this love it is that comes to us now, seeks us, speaks to us, tries to save us-you, me, all.
O, will not all your hearts open to this love, be made active by it ? find your heaven in it? Thus only by the heart can we come to know that " God is love."
This view of God should correct some wrong impressions re- specting his Providences.
They look dark sometimes, seem unkind. In spite of His goodness suspicions exist that back of all is something very different from love. There is enough in God's treatment of sinners to disturb their fears. There is what seems to neu- tralize the tokens of benevolence. How can the sinner, con- scious that he is against God, rid himself of the idea that God is against him ? Looking through the medium of a troubled conscience, how can he see the God of love in any thing ? But as we may now look into the face of Immanuel, are we obliged to look at God through guilt and fear ? must we always find dark powers in the trials of life ? To be rid of all such feelings we must find God, not only as kind, lovely, but as Love itself, and as love working all His works. Above, beyond all works of power, God has had His eye on the Cross to be set up for us.
He with such power, He with such wisdom, He with such goodness, did in the beginning purpose to come in person to show us that He made all-manages all, in love. What- ever long ages He took to fit up this world for moral beings, they were ages in which love was working for us. Hear the wonderful words : " From before the foundation of the world, He loved us." The love that from the foundation of the world, in the foundation of the world was working for us ; the love that endured the cross for us, that now reigns and intercedes for us ; that same love appoints our discipline- every trial, every cross-in all aiming to bring us to the highest possible human experience of God, as love, in the heart. With this revelation, this experience of God, the soul,
19
even in darkest hours, moves in the clear light of Divine love ; amid greatest troubles rests in sweet peace on the calm ocean of Infinite Love.
See How to regard the want of enjoyment in God.
Though not now happy in God, many think they shall be hereafter, because He is Love. Is He not Love now ? Why not happy in God now ? Why no happy communings with Him, as of a living soul with a living God ? Surrounded on all sides with the full ocean of Divine blessings, is your soul still athirst ? Why ? Because estranged from God : and, so remaining, you must thirst forever. The simple fact that God is love does not now make you happy, and may never make you happy. Not to love God in Christ, not to know in your heart that He is love, is to be not happy.
The heart's great need-a discovery of God in Christ.
What awful forms the gods of the human mind assume ! Some Moloch, Beelzebub, Mars, Kali. Gods of blood, lust, wrath. Images shocking stand for ideas more shocking. Even now, what ideas of God! Gods of war of some name, demons of some shape, malignants of some kind. Even in the civilized world some law, some principle, abstraction, im- personality ; something distant, cold, dead-such are the gods of reason, of philosophy. Or the universe robbed of God and then called God-empty, cold, soulless Pantheism-leaving the soul of man empty, cold, dead ! In Christian as in heathen lands, to how many is the God of love " unknown ! " To all unrenewed hearts He is the " unknown." Not till turned from all forms of idolatry, not till we find God in Christ Jesus, can we know the God of love. But alas ! how many find nothing in Christ to admire, nothing to trust, nothing to love. Dear friends, God in Christ comes to you, seeks you, longs to be recognized, loved. Open your hearts, let the Holy Spirit reveal our Lord Jesus to your hearts, that you may joyfully exclaim, " My Lord ! my God ! "
-
20
See How to regard the means used to bring us to Christ.
They are not the arbitrary arrangements of one with no living interest in us. They are the expressions of love. In them the yearning heart of God is seeking our hearts. At this moment He draws near to you. Do all hearts open with a welcome ? The fable is that the Rocky lips of Memnon moved in music at the first touch of the morning beams. The story is that as Florence Nightingale performed her midnight ministrations in Crimean hospitals, the grateful lips of suffering soldiers kissed her shadow as it quietly passed over their pil- lows. The record is that in Jerusalem many, moved by the wonders of love wrought by the Apostles, brought their sick and laid them in beds in the streets, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by, might fall on some of them. And should not the shadow of Immanuel, falling on us, move our hearts to love and our lips to praise ? That shadow, in this service, passes over you, rests upon you now. Nay, not the shadow ; the Lord is here.
God in Christ comes near, breathes out His love over us. At this moment the Lord Jesus reveals the great proof of His love-His Cross. Behold it ! behold it ! At this moment God the Spirit, moving on our hearts, would breathe into them the breath of life. In ways numberless Love Infinite seeks all our hearts. O, yield to the power of Infinite Love, open your hearts to it, welcome it, be folded to its bosom, be warmed to life by it, find your bliss in it. Will you ?
Or must the very God of love turn away from you ? The Lord of life banished from your heart ! Remember ! the same love that calls to life, tells of death. The same love that wept over Jerusalem, left it to its doom. The same love that will say, " come ye blessed," will say, " depart ye cursed."
Which utterance, dear friends, shall we hear, " come," or "" depart ?" Which ? What do our hearts now say to God, " come," or " depart ?" If in love we say, come, come, be mine, come fill me, come reign in me, then shall we hear
21
the glad welcome, " come ye blessed !" O, the joy, the glory of that welcome !
But if any heart can say to the God of love, and persist in saying, " depart, depart from me," then, O then, must you, poor soul, hear the same words-your own words-" depart ; depart from me ! "
22
REMARKS OF REV. DR. BODWELL AT THE SACRAMENT.
After fitting allusion to the Scripture road, and the insti- tution of this supper by our blessed Lord, he continued sub- stantially as follows :
" I am most unwilling to disturb the impression which was made on all our minds by the very beautiful and appropriate discourse of my dear brother and early friend, but in compli- ance with the request of your Pastor, I will give you, briefly, some of my recollections of former deacons of this church, who have long since gone to their rest. I see them still, as they moved with solemn step along the aisles of the old meet- inghouse, distributing the sacramental bread and wine. Some of them were accustomed to sit always in the " deacons' pew," directly under and in front of the high pulpit. One of these was Dea. Simeon Moulton, of very dark hair and eyes, and pale, consumptive face, who impressed me as a quiet and a reverend man. He died when I was still a child.
Dea. Benjamin Philbrick sat by his side; a man whose high conscientiousness and sweet Christian simplicity, and strong attachment to the House of God, some of us well re- member. Though he lived so far away, no summer heat nor winter cold could keep him from the Sabbath service, the monthly concert on the first Monday afternoon of each month, and the preparatory lecture. Hardly was his natural strength abated at ninety years of age. Certainly his intellect was clear, and his affection for this church, and his concern for its spiritual prosperity were strong to the last.
23
A worthy associate of these two good men, Moulton and Philbrick, was Dea. Joseph Sanborn. He was a man of rare endowments, of strong understanding, with a love of Biblical study, an easy command of words, an habitually devont and reverent spirit, and a voice of unusual depth and richness. His gift in prayer was marvellous. How often did I hear the remark made by strangers who listened to him, 'That man ought to have been a preacher.'
One other man who 'used the office of deacon well' in this church, and whom I love to remember, was the upright, generous, and fearless Moses Emery ; of warm sympathies and an unswerving probity, ready to every good work. I seem to hear still his voice in the prayer-meeting, whose peculiar tone expressed so well the sincerity and earnestness of his spirit.
Such were the good men whose united terms of office cov- ered the entire period from my earliest recollection to the time when I left my pleasant home to enter college. The fra- grance of their good names abides with us still. How im- pressive was the scene to me, even as a child, when those men, with my beloved and honored father, ministered in this solemn sacramental service. Would that the mantle of their deep sincerity did more truly rest upon us all !"
24
REMARKS OF REV. MR. PERKINS AT THE SACRAMENT.
After alluding to the sketches just given by Mr. Bodwell, " as pictures passed before us," he remarked that could we have all'the scenes and characters of the century unrolled before us in one panoramic view, we should have, with what- ever sombre shades and even dark colors, also many illumin- ated scenes and characters shining with Divine brightness.
The fact was then emphasized that the reason why this his- tory is not all dark, is to be found in the great truth consid- ered in the morning, that every bright scene and illuminated page in all this history of one hundred years, written or un- written, that every blessed influence and transformation, every comfort and hope ; that all the good that has brightened and gladdened personal histories among these hills and val- leys, had come from the one original fountain-the God of love through Jesus Christ.
Reference was made to the fact that this church has been signally blessed in its ministers, having in each just the man for his time, and in having them all live among their people till death. Mention was made of "Father Bodwell " as the man of whom all his parishioners, for fifty years, said, " Blessed are the peace-makers !" A hearty tribute was paid to his successor, Mr. Boutwell, with an account of his last Sabbath-how, as he was borne to the church in extreme fce- bleness, and during all the services, especially as he read from the 17th chapter of John, partook of the memorials of our Lord's death, and read the Hymn,
"We speak of the realms of the blest;"
25
he seemed to be filled with blessed anticipations and bright visions of those realms, and to enter with deep meaning into the lines,
" And shortly I also shall know And feel, what it is to be there."
In illustration of the blessed work of the gospel in this church, one of its noble women was called to mind-the speaker's grandmother Sanborn-a woman whose large heart and generous sympathies were ever active in ministering to the needy, the sick, and suffering ; a beloved member of this church for seventy-five years, the wife of " the beloved physi- cian," and to the end of her long life of ninety-six years, blest with an active mind and a cheerful spirit, which to the last, shed over this community most happy and blessed influences. Only a few years before her death, when telling how much she enjoyed reading the gospel by John, she said, " I read twelve chapters right off the other day." Allusion was made to her bearing at a time of great and sudden bereavement, by the drowning of her oldest son, Col. Christopher Sanborn. Speaking of that affliction many years afterwards, she said, with all the animation of youth, " Why, Frederic, the Son of Man was with me as I walked my room, in the great sorrow of my heart, as really and as distinctly as you are now."
Blessed woman ! Clear and bright to the last! And when her speech and sight had failed, she expressed her joy in the Lord by an eager, upward gaze, and by clapping her feeble hands, till she " entered in through the gates into the city " of our God.
What the value of the grace of Christ to her during her long life! What the measure of comfort and of joy to all who here have believed in the Lord and have gone or are on their way to the Better Land !
Mr. Perkins made brief but grateful mention of the great revival in 1816, when his mother was converted, and to that of 1831, when he bowed to the Lord. The ages endless will reveal more and more of the blessed work of God here dur- ing the century now past.
4
26
To excite a thought of the value of what has come to the community through the church, the supposition was raised that all that the Gospel has put into the history of the town were taken out of it ; and it was maintained that but for the church of Christ, the history of the town-if history it could have had-would have been the history of men roaming over these hills in the wildness of barbarism, and these acres of earth now fertile would have remained wild and worthless. An appeal was made to Christians to make the future of the church better than the past, and all were called upon to con- sider the value of the church of God to a community, and to understand their place and duty in regard to it.
27
HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
The glory of New England has been its Christian men. They came to a wilderness and changed it to a garden of God. The roughness of its climate and wildness of its scenery, were far better suited to the mettle of those heroic souls than the sunny fields of the south. It was a concinnity such as God delights in ; a combination by His foreordaining Providence, out of which grandest results have been wrought, far less in a great material prosperity, in the productiveness of the soil under inclement skies, and the beauty of multitu- dinous villages and cities, than in the production of men, whose influence is felt to-day, not only wherever a Christian civilization is known, but quite beyond the bounds of civili- zation, to the uttermost ends of the carth. It is obvious to remark how the brave spirits of the men have grappled with almost unparalleled physical obstacles, and subdued them ; but is it not just as true that those very difficulties have developed in the men a measure of intellectual and moral power which, without the struggle with those difficulties, they never could have possessed ? Our great statesman, Daniel Webster, ut- tered a truth of which God is directly the author, when, in reply to the sneering inquiry of a conceited son of the south, " What has New Hampshire produced ?" he proudly an- swered, " Granite and men !"
The names which New Hampshire has given to the pages of history, in jurisprudence, and statesmanship, and theology,
28
and education, and literature, are such as her sons will never have reason to be ashamed of. And yet, in a grand summing up of the fruits which have come of the labors and sacrifices of the Christian men who have made New England, must we not admit immeasurably the largest aggregate result in the quiet godly lives of that vast multitude of men and wo- men whose names have hardly been pronounced outside the boundaries of their own town, or the fellowship of their own church.
This world was made for Jesus Christ; " by Him and for Him," an inspired Apostle says. The end will be accom- plished when His elect of all the nations shall be gathered into His everlasting spiritual kingdom. Then the last will be first and the first last. That which men call glory now will then disappear forever, like the temples and palaces of a great city swept by the devouring fire.
It is true, at the same time, that Christianity is the grand source of whatever is most valuable in the present life, and according to present carthly standards. For almost twenty centuries it has supplied the most steady and healthful stimu- lus to all the industries which have built cities, and spanned rivers, and enlarged the domain of science, and brought na- tions into those intimate relations of commerce which are the surest guarantee of peace; constituting, meanwhile, most beautiful of all, innumerable homes of rest, and love, and joy.
Does not the history of your town during the first century of its existence, furnish a continuous illustration of these truths ? As we look back to-day through the period of a hundred years, what, in your estimation, have been the things of chiefest value in all that time among the hills and valleys which combine to make up the unsurpassed natural beauty of this town of Sanbornton ? There can be but one answer : its churches and its Christian homes. Take these away and nothing would remain worth remembering. All the rest would be of hardly more value than the Indian relics which are occasionally found in plowing up its soil.
The organization of the first church, therefore, and the set-
29
tlement of the first minister, one hundred years ago, were events of deeper interest and significance, than the incor- poration of the town. On the first day of March, 1770, San- bornton was incorporated as part of the great empire of His British Majesty, George III., and the first town meeting was held under his appointment and royal permission, on some day between that first of March and the tenth day of the May next following. This was in the house of Lieut. Chase Taylor, father of the Hon. Nathan Taylor, the first house built in Sanbornton, and occupied to-day by Mr. Thomas Taylor, great-grandson of its builder and first occupant.
No record of that first town-meeting remains, although the room in which it was held is still shown. From subsequent records we learn that Aaron Sanborn, Cole Weeks, and Ste- phen Gale were there and then elected first selectmen of the town ; an event of interest to us, forasmuch as for many years after the incorporation of Sanbornton no more impor- tant business was transacted by the selectmen than that which pertained to the church of God. From the day on which those Christian men, whose names we venerate as the fathers of our town, first penetrated the noble forests which then crowned all these magnificent hills, their primary con- cern was for a minister and a meeting-house, a church of liv- ing members, and stated Christian ordinances, for themselves and for us, their posterity. Accordingly, at the second town- meeting, held on Tuesday, March 26, 1771, in the house of Daniel Sanborn, subsequently, with enlargement, for many years the residence of Dr. Benaiah Sanborn, and now occu- pied by Mr. Thomas M. Jaques, a very important item of business was the passing of a vote " to appoint and clear a place for a meeting-house this year ; to set said house on ye center range line, near ye main rode ; to build it by ye sale of ye pews, and according to ye plan drawn of ye same; to put up ye frame and cover it within 2 year from May next, and chuse a committee to vandue of ye pews and stuff for build- ing said house."
The history of the building of that first meeting-house on the hill, which some of us so well remember, would make a deeply
30
interesting chapter in the annals of Sanbornton. How the forests rang with the sturdy strokes of the axe, startling the bears and wolves then so numerous ; how, on the appointed day, the in- habitants of the neighboring towns came to help at the rais- ing, and then how, in the poverty of the people, the necessity of incessant toil in clearing away the forests and ploughing and planting for their own sustenance, and the absence of some of their best men to fight in our country's great battle for liberty, the work went slowly on for a series of years, and the first minister, the Rev. Joseph Woodman, preached in it to those noble-hearted men and their noble-hearted wives through summer's heat and winter's cold, when it had no pulpit and no pews, and was less comely in its exterior, and less comfortable within, than the barns of some of you are to-day-these are things which our fathers told us, and which may be gleaned from the early records of the town.
It need occasion us little surprise that the vote passed on the 26th of March, 1771, was not carried into effect. Wheth- er they managed to " appoint and clear a place for a meet- ing-house " that year, we do not know ; but it is quite cer- tain that they failed to " put up ye frame and cover it, within 2 year from May next." The delay, however, only made them the more resolute, for, nearly three years later, on the thirteenth day of December, 1773, a special town-meeting was called for the sole object of taking further measures for building and " compleating " the meeting-house. The hearts of our fathers were resolute on that cold December day, as they looked on each other's faces in one of the large, unfin- ished rooms, as we suppose, of Daniel Sanborn's house, with- in a stone's throw of the spot where we are now assembled. They prayed, doubtless, then deliberated, and looking wist- fully toward the hill where, according to their former action, the frame of the meeting-house should have been put up and covered in more than six months before, they stoutly resolved " to build the m. h. on an entirely new plan, viz: sixty feet in length by 434 feet in wedth, and to build 36 pews below as by said plan ; to choose a committee to vandne off ye pews and stuff, and to build said house as far as said pews will go,
31
with ye money that ye proprietors of the town have and shall vote for said house ; " also that " the meeting-house shall be raised, boarded, shingled, and ye lower flowers laid, and ye lower part of ye house glassed, by the first of November, 1774; that the house shall be finished so far as the pew money shall go towards it by November 1, 1775; " and, finally, " that all ye stuff for ye frame shall be brought to ye meeting-house green by ye last of April next, and ye boards, shingles, and other covering by ye last of September next."
Is it not strange, when we remember the circumstances of that dark and perilous time, that our fathers had the courage to resolve on so much ? That they found it simply impos- sible to accomplish all they marked out in the time specified, we can easily believe.
At the town-meeting of 1777, one vote passed was " $50 of ye money in ye selectmen's hands to be laid out on ye meet- ing-house this year." On the following New Year's day, namely, on the first of January, 1778, the town met for the first time in the new meeting-house, and there all the town- meetings of Sanbornton were held for almost half a century, till the year 1834, when the town declined to repair the house, and surrendered it, by a vote, to the proprietorship of this Society. Evidently the house was exceeding bare and com- fortless on that New Year's day, 1778, for it is recorded that on the 26th of March, 1782, it was voted " to get thirteen thou- sand of claboard nails, and one hundred feet of glass, for the meeting-house ; also, 2000 shingle tens, and one thousand double tens." One year and a half later it was " voted to finish ye gallery in ye meeting-house," and " to build seven pews at cach end of sd gallery, and six pews on ye fore side, to be equally divided as to length, and to be 5} feet wide within board."
On the 23d of June, 1783, a special town-meeting was held in accordance with the warrant of the constable, to set- tle " disputes " that had arisen " concerning some of ye pews in ye meeting-house," and a seat for the children was voted in " an ally of two feet and four inches wide."
During all this time, though they had had a settled minister
32
twelve years, and had helped generously in the building of his house, there was no pulpit in their meeting-house, for at a special town-meeting held August 15, 1785, Lieut. Chase, Ens. True, and Ens. Nathaniel Grant were chosen a commit- tee to build a pulpit with the money which had been raised for the building of the pews, and they were instructed to build it by the March meeting of the following year. It was not their fault that when the fathers assembled at that March meeting they saw no pulpit in their meeting-house, or at least only one that was partly finished, for at that meeting, March 28, 1786, the same committee was re-appointed, with instruc- tions to finish the pulpit by the first of October following, as far as the money raised for the pews would do it. We may believe that in that year, 1786, the good people of Sanborn- ton had the inexpressible pleasure, on some bright Sunday, to see the minister who had been with them fifteen years, and baptized their children, and buried their dead, ascend to that high pulpit, which had been so long in building, and to praise its beauty as they returned to their homes; for in August of the very next year the town " voted to build two pews at west end of men's seats, on lower floor, in lower part of meeting-house, and two pews at east end of women's seats ; about six feet square, the selectmen to sell said pews and procure ye pay." A strange picture, as it seems to us, that congregation must have presented to the good minister, as he looked upon them from his high pulpit painted thick of a deep mahogany color, the men by themselves at one end, and the women by themselves at the other end, with a seat for the children " in an ally of two feet and four inches wide."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.