USA > New Jersey > Union County > Plainfield > Centenary, First Baptist Church, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1818-1918, November 24th, 25th, 1918 > Part 3
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In religion, as in other matters, he was a confessed individualist. His interest was in the individual human soul and its eternal destiny. Men, he thought, were to be saved or lost because of what they be- lieved as conscious and rational be- ings. They could be saved only through the truth, and the truth could be apprehended only through a voluntary exercise of mental ac- tivity. If men could be induced to believe what is true and right, and would act upon it, he thought, so- ciety as a whole, and every part of it, would take care of itself. If, on the contrary, they believed what was false and wrong, or were blown about by every wind of doctrine, so- ciety would be in perpetual danger, and neither law, nor charity, nor any form of social or political or- ganization could save it from disas- ter.
The problem of the Church was therefore, as he conceived it, to bring men and women personally to Christ. This, he thought, was to be done chiefly by preaching. For this purpose he became a preacher, a typical preacher of the nineteenth century. For this he was singular- ly fitted both by heredity and en- vironment. On both sides of his family his ancestors were of sturdy, self-reliant, and self-respecting stock, in fortune independent and substantial, yet unspoiled by a crav- ing for gain or power, content to be good citizens and to serve in the way most useful to their country and the communities in which they lived.
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tiis first American forefather, John Hill, of Dover, came from England to Boston about 1640, and later bought land and settled near Dover, in New Hampshire, where, and in the adjacent State of Maine, five generations had lived and died, own- ing and cultivating large tracts of land, and taking their places in the civil government as local and State officers. For three generations these descendants of John Hill, who was a Puritan, appear to have been Independents in their religious con- victions, bearing the Scriptural names Samuel, Joseph, and Isaac; but when the perilous days of resist- 'ing the assaults of the Indians were over and the community had settled down to a condition of safe and sub- stantial tranquility, the next two generations figure in the records of the Society of Friends. In 1796, Isaac Hill, representing the sixth generation in America, migrated to the town of Marlborough, in Ulster County, New York, on the Hudson River, and there, on December 3, 1803, on his father's farm, Daniel Trembley Hill was born, near Mil- ton Landing.
The curious name "Trembley" certainly had no connection with any physical or mental characteris- tic of this very solid and fearless boy, whose career of firmness was destined to refute any suspicion of this kind. Nor had it any relation to his ancestry. It was conferred upon the child in honor of a mer- chant in New York to whom his father consigned tne sloops which he sent down the Hudson River to that city laden with the products of his quarries and his farms,-a name which clearly establishes the Swiss origin of this worthy gentleman as a member of a family well known in Switzerland, of which the natural- ist, Abraham Trembley, of Geneva, a correspondent of the French In- stitute, a member of the Royal So- ciety of London, and noted in his time as a writer on religion and ed- ucation, was a distinguished mem- ber.
If there be any truth in the the- ories of heredity propounded by the
late Francis Galton, we may find in the Quaker ancestry of the Rever- end Daniel Trembley Hill, an expla- nation of the deeply meditative side of his nature, of that love of the soil and its cultivation which he retain- ed throughout his life, and of the sound business sense that he pos- sessed in a pre-eminent degree; but it would never account for his be- coming a Baptist preacher, - or for his aggressive championship of the Baptist faith in the Church Militant of his time.
It was from his mother, Juliana Reeder, daughter of Captain Jacob Reeder, and granddaughter of Na- thaniel Jayne, both active partici- pants in the War for Independence, that Daniel derived ~ his fighting qualities and his militant faith. This lady came to Plainfield with her son when he assumed the pas- torate of this Church, and resided with him until her death. It was her faith that led him to the Chris- tian ministry and strengthened him in the strenuous pursuit of it.
Religious conviction had driven her ancestor, the Reverend William Jayne, to seek a home and a mis- sion in America. An Oxford Uni- versity · scholar, he had become a dissenter, and thereby was deprived of a career as a minister in England. In 1678 he settled at Brookhaven, Long Island, where he lived to a great age as pastor of the Indepen- dent Church of that village. Eight thousand of his descendants, it is said, have actually been counted in the United States. A detachment of his family and another of the Reed- ers, who also had settled on Long Island, removed to Cornwall, Orange County, New York, where Nathaniel Jayne's daughter Sarah married Captain Jacob Reeder. So conspicu- ous for their patriotism were these two families, that in the town of Cornwall alone thirteen of their number, four Jaynes and nine Reed- ers, in 1757, before the Declaration of Independence, signed the Articles of Association, in which they pledged their lives and their for- tunes to the Revolutionary cause. The Long Island branch of the
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Jayne family was even more con- spicuous in the war. Twenty-nine members of the tribe of Jayne were in one company, under the command of Captain William Jayne, and all are said to have been "either killed, wounded, or taken -
prisoners." Captain Reeder was engaged, among other activities, in forging and attaching the ponder- ous iron chain stretched across the Hudson River at the spot called An- tony's Nose, to prevent the passage of British ships northward in their endeavor to form a junction with Burgoyne, who was moving down the river upon Albany from the north. The union, if effected, would have given the king's forces the com- plete command of the Hudson, which would no doubt have result- ed in the defeat of Independence. The chain was eventually broken, but not until the sturdy defense of the local forts had so retarded the advance as to prevent Sir Henry Clinton from relieving Burgoyne and saving him from surrender,- an event which soon occurred and encouraged the French to make a treaty of alliance with the Ameri- cans; and thus was decided by their timely aid the fate of the strug- gling colonists, and perhaps, as events may prove, the future fate of the whole world. "From that day to this," writes a historian, "no foreign power has ever been able to pass up and down the Hudson River without doing homage to the American flag"; and it may be add- ed, that every Great Power on earth has since saluted it with re- spect.
It was of these stern struggles for liberty that the child Daniel heard the story at his mother's knee, min- gled with the other story of how the world was redeemed by a Saviour who perished on the cross. And thus deeply graven on his young heart were the two great tragedies that have made America what it is, -the tragedy of the progress of mankind toward a world to be ruled by law, and the tragedy of its prog- ress toward a law inspired by love. Honor then to Juliana Reeder, pa-
triot and saint, to whom so far as I know this is the first public tri- bute ever paid; but she was only one of many. Let all the patriotic and saintly mothers of America, past and present ,who have lived, and toiled, and sacrificed to raise up, in- spire, solace or ennoble brave and thoughtful men to contend for the cause of human liberty, either in the field or in the forum, share the high honor which is their due.
It was by her own independent reading of the New Testament, over which she poured by the bright fire- light when the day's work was done, or when the Sabbath rest and still- ness called her thoughts toward Heaven, where some of . her eight little children were already await- ing her, that Juliana Reeder became convinced of her personal duty as a follower of Christ, eager to obey to the letter every command of her Master, and so far departed from the practice of her learned Oxford ancestor as to submit to baptism in what she considered the Scriptural sense. This event occurred only a few months before her child Dan- iel was born; a circumstance which, in after years, led him in his hu- morous way to declare, that he was "a Baptist dyed in the wool"!
It is singular that this conscien- tious attempt to learn and put into practice the exact meaning of a New Testament command should ever have been considered as a sign of sectarian defection. If the New Testament is of divine authority, it is certainly deserving of a scrupu- lous interpretation. Upon the facts of New Testament practice high scholarship has never differed. The division of opinion has been alto- gether regarding the importance of a literal fulfilment of a divine com- mand. I shall not here pursue this subject further than to say, that Ju- liana Reeder and her son were not ashamed to honor the practice and the command of their Master as they understood them. They were resolved to take their Saviour at His word.
What is of first importance in this connection is the question, whether
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WILLIAM WHITE
Chairman of Building Committee who, in the middle of the Century, directed the erection of the Stone edifice of the First Baptist Church of Plainfield, in which the Centenary is celebrated.
life is to be controlled by personal conscience, or by convenience and the established usages of society. If by the former, there must of neces- sity be divergences of belief; and the rule of Christian liberty must, therefore, be respected. But if us- age and convention are to be pre- dominate, personal conscience has no function to perform. It may log- ically abdicate.
This, in a serious mind, is of course impossible. The whole sys- tem of Christian faith is built upon the consciousness of personal sin. Christ came into the world to save sinners. If this were a righteous world, there would be no need of His coming. Self-righteous men in- variably reject Him. For them He has no meaning.
Regarded wholly from an extern- al point of view, there is no stand- ard but utility for judging what is right or wrong. Personal con- science alone reveals the reality of sin. Reformers ʻbusy themselves with trying to alleviate the external symptoms of human misery,-in- temperance, marital infidelity, busi- ness cupidity, and so on. But it is sin that is the root of evil in the world,-the deliberate violation of a rule of right because this grati- fies a personal inclination. We hear in our time much of the need of "Justice," of "Peace," of "Free- dom"; but the inner proclivity of mankind to violate all of these is rarely mentioned. "Sin" has be- come an old-fashioned word, almost lost to the modern vocabulary, ex- cept in the pulpit. In truth, to many minds sin does not exist . Ap- petites, passions, and ambitions are regarded as biological functions, not subject to voluntary personal con- trol; and the iniquities of life are attributed to forms of disease to be treated tenderly, or to alleged de- fects in existing social organiza- tion, like the wage-system for ex- ample, which are declared to be re- sponsible for the crimes of thieves and murderers.
The nineteenth century preachers were not of this mind. They be- lieved in individual responsibility.
They believed, furthermore, in the necessity and the righteousness of punishment. They brought its penal- ties vividly before the mind, and
when the conscience was once awakened on a matter of principle they did not hesitate to point the finger of accusation at the guilty culprit, and to cry out, "Thou art the man."
Confession, repentance, and new efforts with God's help to live a righteous life,-these were the trumpet-calls of that virile minis- try. For them it was the individ- ual that counted. Society, they thought, can no more be regenerat- ed by mere reorganization than a bankrupt institution can be saved from ruin by opening a new set of books. When the individual is right, they believed the community will be right, and the world will be right. Until he is so,-and he will not be until he comprehends his place in the moral universe, and is ready to check his desires and per- form his obligations in conformity with God's eternal laws of recti- tude,-we shall have neither the peace of the world, nor social jus- tice, nor common honesty in dealing in matters either great or small.
My father's convictions on this
subject date from a very early period of his life. When only four
years old, he made the startling discovery, in his own experience, of the reality of sin.
recall with great distinctness 1 the story of this discovery, told to me when he was more than seventy years old. His expression when he foreshadowed the gravity of its pur- port and his emotions during the narrative caused me to expect some terrible revelation, some disclosure of horrible wickedness, in dark con- trast with his orderly and conse- crated life. I remember, too, en- tertaining the thought that, per- haps, after all, I did not need to go back as far as Adam to find an apol- ogy for some of my own misdeeds. But in this I was quickly disappoint- ed and rebuked. The simple story he told was such a complete anti- climax to my tragic expectations
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that it seemed to me at the moment very amusing, and I repeat the sub- stance of it here only to illustrate the intense introspection which was habitual with him and the delicacy of sentiment which had been devel- oped in him even in his earliest years. As a child he had slept in the same room with an elder broth- er who, because of an accident, was confined to his bed. Kind neigh- bors, to cheer the child's pain and solitude, had sent to little Samuel, some cakes, and these treasures were kept in a small box under the boy's bed. In the night, the temp- tation came to little Daniel .to slip over to Samuel's bed as he slept, and to take one of his precious cakes. Before he was fully con- scious of what he was doing he had opened the box and taken the cake. Creeping back to his own bed he bit into the sweet morsel, but it seemed to turn to ashes on his lips. As in a flash, he saw himself a thief, and in danger of soon becoming a liar! The revelation swept over him, as he described it, as if a curse had been pronounced upon him. The horrible meanness of his act made him hate and scorn himself. Tears rushed to his eyes, his face burned with shame, and a cold sweat broke out on his body. Instantly, he rush- ed to his brother's bedside, woke him up, told him of what he had done, and asked his forgiveness.
It seems like a childish story,
too trivial to stir anew in memory of
an old man's emo- tions; but that narrative had
a curious effect upon me. At the moment, in my self-sufficiency, I felt like saying, "And so you suffer yourself still to be sorry for an act so harmless, so easily repaired, and so readily forgiven"; but, as I re- flected upon it, I looked into my father's face with a sense of awe and reverence. He had disclosed in the conscience of a little child the overflowing fountain of a divinely regulated life.
It was no wonder that Daniel Hill became a Minister of Christ. He needed no long discipline in the- ology. His mission was already
clear. He had no doubts, he had no fears. He would have been shock- . ed if he were told that a philosoph- ical argument was necessary to prove the divine existence.
As a youth, he worked in his father's fields. He and his brother planted; but, to him, it was God who gave the increase. From this deep intuition his mind never wav- ered. And he was early resolved to be a co-worker with God, as the Scriptures taught him all men should be. But sin was in the world. Christ had come, not only to destroy its consequences, but to eradicate it from the human heart, where as a vestige of an animal in- heritance it still continues to lin- ger. .
Men of great talents, standing on the threshold of a responsible life, often ask themselves, "What is my mission in life? What have I to do or to say in the world?" It would seem that Daniel Hill had no need to ask this question. From his boyhood a voice had been calling to him, calling in the glories of the day and in the watches of the night. Already he had received his march- ing orders. He knew that he was to be a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of man -- kind, from the hatefulness of sin.
I have dwelt a little on these ex- periences, because they serve to re- call, in a concrete way, some of the great realities which the world is in danger of forgetting. Our age is so overcharged with preoccupations, motion has become so rapid and so universal, material gain has become so pressing and so attractive, that the spiritual life, the daily commun- ion even with our better selves, is more than formerly crowded out of our existence. In these concrete examples drawn from an earlier time, there is no purpose to repre- sent them as exceptional. On the contrary, I wish to emphasize their significance as forces underlying our historic development as a people. Particularly, I would bring it home to our thoughts that our material civilization is not all gain, and that
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the simplicity of earlier days was not all loss.
In 1803, when my father was born, the territory of the United States extended only to the Missis- sippi River. It was ín that same year that President Jefferson com- pleted the great transaction known as the "Louisiana Purchase," ob- taining from Napoleon I, then at war with England, that vast do- main for a price easily within the range of many now existing private fortunes. The Federal Constitu- tion, which was to give such stabil- ity and prosperity to this country, and to serve as a model for so many experiments in government, had been in existence only fourteen years, and Washington had been
dead only four years. It was not until 1804 ,that the first locomotive engine ever used was run on the coal-road at Merthyr Tydvil, in Wales. The first railway in Ameri- ca was not completed until twenty- three years afterward, in 1827, only a year before my father began his ministry with this Church. I well recall his account of his earliest distinct recollection as a child, when at the age of four, in 1807, he saw the first steamboat in the
world, Robert Fulton's Clermont,
come puffing and groaning, and
shrieking up the Hudson River, amidst smoke and flame blazing high in the air from the pine wood used as fuel. "The terrible spec- tacle," writes a historian, "particu- larly after dark, appalled the crews of the sailing vessels, who saw it rapidly approaching against ad-
verse wind and tide. Many of them fell on their knees in humble prayer for protection, while others disappeared beneath the decks or es- caped to the shore." My father's account of the matter declared that the servant who had him in charge gathered him in her arms at this strange sight, and ran into the house, announcing that "the Devil was coming up the river on a raft."
It seems incredible that my fath- er could have voted for John Quin- cy Adams for President of the United States, and might have shak-
en hands with every subsequent President down to Benjamin Harri- son, or that he was already an or- dained preacher when the Monroe Doctrine was first promulgated. Yet it is true that his life-term includ- ed most of the really important events in our entire national his- tory. It is not without interest to note that a little more than a score of such lives would span the entire Christian Era, presenting a continu- ous channel for the transmission of the Christian tradition through all its vicissitudes. What a security is thus afforded to the integrity of the Written Word! An unbroken life- giving influence, an uninterrupted succession of witnesses, the Church unceasingly declaring to the world, through its living members, that Christianity is not merely a creed, but pre-eminently a life.
How constantly this life has en- tered into the development and des- tiny of our country we well know. Amidst a thousand obstacles and deflecting influences, it has vitalized our national character. Puritans, Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Unitarians and Cath- olics have all, in their own way, left their impress upon it, or upon some parts of it. But they have all, af- ter their own fashion, reverenced one and the same Master, they have all felt the need of a Divine Re- deemer.
I cannot believe that it was harm- ful to us as a people that the prin- ciple of perfect religious liberty came to be accepted in America as an inherent human right, which has been guaranteed to all in our Fed- eral Constitution.
When, in 1828, Daniel Hill came to Plainfield, to be the pastor of this Church, the Baptist Brother- hood was not looked upon with fa- vor by the ecclesiastical world. Bap- tists had suffered persecution in Massachusetts, they had won their liberty in Rhode Island, and they had drawn into their fellowship considerable numbers of adherents under the new rule of liberty, for which they had stoutly contended; but they still had to establish their
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position as a religious body of per- manent consequence.
From 1828 to 1839, "Dominie Hill," as he was called by those who employed this word, which the Dutch had corrupted from the Lat- in "dominus," preached the Gospel in this First Baptist Church of Plainfield. He brought to it no con- spicuous learning, but he possessed the usual school education of his time supplemented by a love of books, an excellent memory, a clear and logical understanding, an earn- est desire to learn, and a determina- tion to "prove all things and hold fast that which is good." Like oth- er pastors of his time, he lived simply; but substantially and in his own house; receiving a small salary, which, however, in purchasing pow- er was far greater than it would now seem.
There is probably no one now liv- ing who can speak with knowledge of his personality or his ministry in that early time. It is doubtful also if any one now living remembers the young bride he brought with him to Plainfield, although the memory of her piety, her kindli- ness, and her cultivation lingered long afterward, and was revived by Mr. Hill's second ministry in Plain- field, as pastor of the Second Bap- tist Church from 1843 to 1853.
Although my mother died in in Carmel, New York, it is possible that she may still be remembered by some who knew her in this later period. She was the daughter of
the Reverend William Catlin Thompson, a descendant of an old New York family, and at one time a resident and land owner in what is now Chatham Street in that city. Lydia Ann Thompson was well adapted to share the duties and re- sponsibilities of the young preach- er. Her father, although his grand- mother was a French Huguenot, who had sought refuge in this coun- try from persecution in her native land, had been originally a member of the Society of Friends; but as in the case of Juliana Reeder, and many others of that time, his pri- vate study of the Scriptures had led
him to the ministry of the Baptist Church, and he had become a pas- tor at Newburgh, New York, on the Hudson.
I should not, perhaps, when speaking of the Christian Ministry, overlook the fact that the first child of this marriage, my eldest brother, who became the Reverend Isaac Newton Hill, and was for many years pastor at Elizabeth, New Market, and other places in New Jersey, and who must be well re- membered by many persons in this vicinity, was brought to Plainfield, in 1818, as an infant, and received his earliest religious instruction in this church, later entering the Uni- versity of the City of New York and afterward Madison University, finishing his preparation for his life-work in the Theological Semi- nary connected with that institution.
Like most of the preachers of his time, my father did not enjoy these advantages. But by diligent study he attained to a degree .of knowl- edge and of culture that rendered this deprivation no great misfor- tune. A style clear, forceful, and correct in its diction, and always elevated and dignified in the sub- stance it conveyed, marked his preaching. Next to the Bible, which he knew almost by heart, especially the New Testament, the British poets were his favorite reading. I well remember in his large collec- tion of books the row of calf-bound volumes from which to my great de- light he was accustomed to read aloud, often repeating long pass- ages from memory.
I must not weary beyond meas- ure the patience of this audience, but I cannot forebear making some reference to the theological concep- tions which were dominant in my father's time and his relation to them as a preacher of Christ.
Taking the New 'restament as his text-book, and finding in it no men- tion or suggestion of a systematic theology, he classed all such sys- tems with other human sciences, which change from age to age and prove the folly of accepting any form of them as a finality.
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