USA > New Jersey > Hunterdon County > Readington > Historical discourse and addresses delivered at the 175th anniversary of the Reformed Church, Readington, N.J., October 17, 1894 > Part 2
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" The lore of Christ and His Apostles twelve He taught, but first he followed them himselve."
And it is remarkable how deeply that life was impressed upon those who were reared under its influence.
Those were days of strong, spiritually-minded, and influential men and women. The pictures of some of them hang yonder at the rear of the church. Those who have been absent from these scenes for any time, and who have returned to enjoy the festivities of this joyous day with us, may take pleasure in looking once more upon these faces. One there is among them, of which we cannot help saying that we know that it would have afforded its owner the greatest pleasure to have been permitted to see this day, and
*March 24, some say.
REV. PETER STUDDIFORD, FIFTH PASTOR, 1786-1826.
٠٠٠
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share with us its enjoyments. Judge Thompson's life was one which was most closely identified with the life of this church. We know that he would have delighted in this Anniversary.
But he had " served his generation " long and well, and the time for his departure had fully come. Nearly a year ago he " breathed his spirit forth, and fell in his Redeemer's arms asleep." Others there were, besides Judge Thompson, who wrought here, and became veritable pillars in this house of God. And not a few had their lots cast elsewhere, but wherever they went, they at once became prominent in every good word and work.
In them Dr. Van Liew's light still shines in many places. I am glad indeed that through the thoughtful generosity of his children, this grand man is to live anew in the midst of this community throughout the years to come by means of the beauti- ful tablet to his memory which it will soon be our privilege to see unveiled.
I might add as I conclude this portion of my narrative that four churches were organized during this pastorate, all of which drew their first strength very largely from Readington. They were, of Reformed churches-Stanton (1833), South Branch (1850) and Three Bridges (1872). And there was one Methodist church, that of Centreville, organized in 1869.
The rest of my story might perhaps be called modern history. It deals with events that are so recent and people who are so well known that I do not feel called upon in the least to undertake their advocacy.
The Rev. John G. Van Slyke followed Dr. Van Liew in 1869. It had been our expectation that he would be here today to recall some of the events of his pastorate, but at the last moment a tel- egram came announcing his detention by reason of the death of a near relative.
Dr. Van Slyke did not remain here very long, but suffered him-
2
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self to be enticed away the next year by a sister church, which had grown envious of Readington's prosperity and happiness under his leadership. He was here long enough though to greatly en- dear himself to many hearts and to establish for himself a wide reputation as an able and scholarly preacher; to prove also his helpful, healthful influence over the throngs of young people who then filled this church.
He was succeeded in 1871 by the Rev. John H. Smock, whose term of service, as you well know, was twelve and a half years. Mr. Smock was known not only in this community, but also in others on every side of it as a good preacher, a genial companion and a man of commanding influence in the defense of right. He was deservedly popular with all classes, but especially, I think, with the young. It is a matter of great regret to us that he is un- able to be here to-day. A prior engagement, coupled with the precarious condition of his health, made his presence impossible.
We may be sure his heart is here, though his bodily presence is sadly missed from our company. Mr. Smock resigned this charge in October, 1883, and removed to Glen Head, L. I., where he still resides and continues his ministerial work. In April, 1884, the present pastor was installed, and he has sought to fill this place and perform its varied work ever since. All that he has to say for himself is that he has found the parsonage on the hill a very pleasant home, and the work that has come to him as its oc- cupant a most delightful one in every respect. God has given us the utmost harmony in our work of these almost eleven years. He has also visited us richly with his grace. Thirty-two com- munion seasons have passed in that time, and but one of them has left no new names enrolled upon our church book. The total of communicants received in that time is 245, of which 152 came by confession of faith and 93 by certificates from other churches.
"The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad."
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And now in conclusion, how difficult it is to survey the past as we have done this morning-so long a past, and one fraught with so great significance-without feeling a longing to be able to pro- ject one's vision onward into the future. Fifty, a hundred, a hun- dred and fifty, a hundred and seventy-five years of the past have swiftly passed before us.
The good deeds wrought, and the people who wrought them, have risen before us to be studied anew. We have found them interesting indeed. The Frelinghuysens, Hardenberg, Van Arts- daelen, Studdiford, and Van Liew, these all have lived and wrought and died, and of every one of them it may be said "their works do follow them."
But what of the years to come ?
Fifty, a hundred, a hundred and seventy-five years from now, what shall the remainder of this story be ?
The Scriptures tell us that there is one thing that ever remains. Men may die, the most enduring structures may crumble and fall, the purest renown even may pass out of earthly recollection, but the "word of God abideth forever." That word has been, we know, the essential thing in this church's past. We hold it as the essential thing to-day. We believe that it will ever be thus. And so it will come to pass that as that word goes on to its ever-increas- ing triumphs, this old and dearly-loved church will continually renew her youth, repeat her anniversary occasions, attract to her- self larger and still larger renown, until at the last she shall be permitted to see the bright dawning of that day beautiful which her faithful career shall have done much to advance.
" "Tis coming up the steps of time And this old world is growing brighter ;
We may not see that dawn sublime,
Yet high hopes make the heart throb lighter ;
We may be sleeping in the ground,
When it awakes the world in wonder ;
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But we have felt it gathering round, And heard its voice in living thunder. 'Tis coming ! Yes, 'tis coming !"
At the conclusion of the discourse the Rev. James Le Fevre, D.D., of Middlebush, announced hymn 249, which was heartily sung. It had been expected that the Rev. J. G. Van Slyke, D.D., of Kingston, N. Y., pastor of the church from 1869 to 1870, would next address the audience, but a telegram having been received announcing his inability to be present, the next thing on the programme was the presentation to the church, by the Hon. Jacob F. Randolph, on behalf of the family of the Rev. John Van Liew, D.D., of a tablet to their father's memroy.
Presentation Address by the flon. Jacob F. Randolph.
A very pleasing part of the service this morning has been as- signed to me. It is to communicate to you, the officers and mem- bers of this church and congregation, that the children of Dr. Van Liew-his two sons and one daughter-who are here to-day, mindful of their childhood and youth so happily spent here in your midst, and not forgetting the very many kindnesses received from all the members of the congregation and remembering the earnest zeal of their father in his work as pastor of this church, desire to present to you the tablet yonder upon the wall, and to ask your acceptance of it. They do not present it for its pecuniary value, , for that is only a trifle, neither for its beauty, for we see what has more beauty every day.
Upon the tablet is written:
IN MEMORY OF REV. JOHN VAN LIEW, D. D. BORN 1798. DIED 1869. PASTOR, 1827-1869.
REV. JOHN VAN LIEW, D. D., SIXTH PASTOR, 1827-1869.
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Which records the long years of active service for the Master, and we trust the passerby, as he reads the inscription, may be re- minded of a well ordered Christian life, and be led thereby heav- enward.
It is just a quarter of a century to-morrow since Dr. Van Liew was called away, and his end was peace.
In yonder cemetery his mortal remains are buried, awaiting the resurrection of the just. The plot, with its strong iron enclosure, and the beautiful monument upon it, are a tribute of his love and loving parishioners of this church.
A part of the inscription upon the monument is :
" Living, we loved him ; Dead, we revere him. Glorified, we shall meet him In the heavenly world."
In the heavenly world ! The heavenly world! It is no flight of fancy; it is our own faith, which oversteps the grave and sees him there, watching with earnest eye one and another and another and still another and another of his parishioners here as they enter there, sealed with the testimony of this earthly Zion, that " this man was born in her," thus adding another and another and still another " Star to his crown of rejoicing."
At the conclusion of Mr. Randolph's address the tablet was unveiled by the Rev. Elias W. Thompson. It is a neat slab of the finest Italian marble, 18-30 inches in size, the inscription being in letters of gold. It is placed on the wall to the left of the pulpit, nearly over the pew occupied by the elders of the church.
In receiving the gift for the church the pastor responded with a few words of heartfelt gratitude to those who had so thoughtfully and lovingly sought to perpetuate in this sacred spot the memory of one to whom this community owed so much. At the conclu- sion of his remarks the Rev. E. W. Thompson made an announce-
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ment of the long list of relics and antiquities which had been brought together for this occasion, and were on exhibition at the front of the church ; and invited all who were interested in such things to inspect them at their leisure during the day. (For a list of these things, see Note, at the end of this volume).
In the roomy basement beneath the church five long tables,. capable of seating 238 persons at once, had been prepared. Thither the guests were invited and asked to partake of the bounty of the church. These tables were filled four times. Hence it is safe to say that 850 persons in all had the needs of the inner man supplied. Much pleasure was realized in the reunion of friends long-separated, and the two hours of intermission passed almost. ere the people were aware of its flight.
AFTERNOON SESSION.
At 2:30 o'clock the congregation again assembled. The audience room was so crowded at that time that the aisles were filled with benches, and still many had to stand. The exercises were opened with the singing of an anthem by the choir, after which prayer was offered by the Rev. E. G. Read, of Somerville, and hymn 20, was announced by the Rev. J. B. Drury, D.D., editor of the " Christian Intelligencer." Addresses were next delivered by the pastors of the five churches once collegiate with this. : First, Raritan ; First, New Brunswick ; Millstone ; Neshanic and Bed- minster. These addresses are here published in the order in which they were delivered.
Address by the Rev. Wm. Stockton Cranmer.
I am reminded before I begin that I must be brief. Not only does the pastor of the church delicately hint that of making many
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words there must sometime be an end; but the very program it- self, with its wealth of promise for the afternoon and evening, as well as the smiling presence of the pastors of many other churches anxious in their turn to greet you, urge me to waive the minister- ial privilege of speaking for a full half hour.
For these are not the good old times when the all-day session was the regular, not the special order-when, between the morn- ing and afternoon service the people assembled, not in the base- ment of the church for a railroad luncheon, but under the shelter of the white-topped farm wagons for the more leisurely if not more substantial fare. And when, polemics and dogmatics having been generously treated of while the sands in the pulpit hour-glass had slowly slidden through, the preacher would certainly turn it over again and invite the congregation to have another glass. "Dom- ine," said a long suffering elder the other day, "I wish you would preach shorter sermons." "Shorter sermons! Why, I feel that I ought to give the people the sincere milk of the Word." "That's all right," said the elder-"the sincere milk of the Word, but these are the days of condensed milk."
Which is only another way of reaffirming that the good old days are gone. No more the toilsome assembling of the heavy farm wagons with their loads of coatless men and barefoot children ; no more the stands out there on the church-green where the slaves sold malt beer, crullers and gingerbread ; no more the stately and solemn entrance of Frelinghuysen, prince of pioneers, or of Har- denberg with the juvrouw on his arm, while the congregation waited standing until the good man had ascended to the pulpit and looked down benignantly upon them.
There were giants in those days-men of robust, sinewy faith, of sober speech and earnest life and religious convictions, intense and burning.
But that is not to say that those of these days are degenerate,
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and that the sons are unworthy of their sires. True we cannot still detect the wiles of the devil by the cut of a coat, nor hear the lures of the evil one in the scraping of a fiddle; but one has only to listen to such speech as we heard this morning to know that the succession is safe ; one needs only to remember that for 175 years the call to repentance has sounded from this pulpit, and that the fruitage of six generations of church going is to be found in those godly men and women of this day who are the living incarnation of pious ancestral influence. Here flows still the milk and honey of the Gospel. Here the grapes of Eschol still ripen for the faith- ful and the brave. The land so laboriously won by the fathers is transmitted to you improved and enlarged, with opportunities and responsibilities correspondingly enlarged. That you stand ready to assume these responsibilities, anxious and able to do for the future what the past has done for you, I cannot doubt. Love to Christ is in every heart-beat ; loyalty to His Church is a part of your daily thought. Others have spoken (and will yet speak) out of the experience of what their eyes have seen and their ears heard ; me you will permit, as the latest comer into this garden of the Dutch Church, to look forward rather than backward, and to require of you in the days to come the realization of all this promise and potency of the past.
I have not known you hitherto. So far as I know, not a drop of Dutch blood flows in my veins. I am a sort of wild olive, grafted in. I am not a Dutchman, but I am a Jerseyman; I am not a Dutchman, but I am a Christian ; and there's not a drop of blood of any kind but rejoices in your joy this day and thrills sympa- thetically with every appeal to local remembrance and ancestral pride. The old mother church of the Raritan Dutch, here pres- ent in my person to-day, brings you greeting. We are of one stock, one blood, one faith, one hope. The hope that flows so rejoicingly in you is of the same current that swells in us. Old
-
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SECOND CHURCH BUILDING, 1738-1833.
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you are indeed, and full of works, but not too old nor too affluent to receive what I bring you-the mother's blessing.
It was a graceful word that your pastor spoke concerning our search for the date of that old first building. When the date (1709) shall have been proven, we shall have recovered a fact of local church history unknown to Dr. Messler, and gotten us a house of worship ten years before our proud and prosperous daughter took up her home in the famous log church over there at the head waters of the river. Indirectly this is already proved, one might say, by the fact that the first elders and deacons of the Readington Church had their children baptized in the Raritan Church, and that some of those same children, baptized before the time of your organization, afterwards became your honored office bearers. If the Raritan congregation worshipped in a barn or private house, the inference is that you, too, might have done the same and need not have gone so far for the sacraments. But you preferred to wait until, like the mother church, you could have your own house of worship.
In a few years now we, too, shall celebrate an anniversary-our two hundredth-and it may be that at that time we shall be in a position to make the occasion memorable in some such fashion as you have done this day, by the unveiling of a tablet and the utter- ance of feeling tribute to the memory of one of God's faithful servants. Meantime it is pleasant to be reminded that the grave of him who served us jointly for so long a time, the first (and may I not say the saintliest) of them all is neither lost nor neglected as we feared. Your pastor has read the inscription on the monu- ment erected over that grave, the grave of Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen. And in two things only has your pastor erred : first, in not giving me credit for having called that important matter to his attention ; and second, in not translating for us the Latin motto. I asked one of the more learned brethren to give me the
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sense of it, and he says it means, "I ask not favour, I fear not blame." Lofty soul ! Of such stuff and fibre God's prophets are made. May that "spiritual religion " for which he contended, that gospel of the grace of God in the heart, long continue to be the glory of this pulpit, and the unfailing comfort of your lives ! Never may there cease to be heard in this place the old-time protest against formalism in the churches ; and never may there fail to be made, of those who would enter the Kingdom, the old-time, the all-time requirement, "Ye must be born again !"
And now, what can I better do than give you the ancient salu- tation of the Dutchman as he went from house to house at the beginning of the year :
"Long may you live ! Much may you give ! Happy may you die, And Heaven be yours By and by ! "
Greetings of the First Reformed Church of New Bruns- Wick, by the Rev. P. Theodore Pockman, Pastor.
My Dear Bros. and Friends :- The First Reformed Church of New Brunswick brings greetings to her sister at Readington.
The pastor, consistory, members, and even the children unite in this salutation. We rejoice in your age, your strength, your promise of continued usefulness. It is not my purpose to draw historical items from the archives of our church to mingle with such as you have already listened to lest I should produce con- fusion in your minds. You want to keep the dates and facts of your own history clearly before you. Permit me, however, to say briefly that we celebrated our 175th anniversary two years ago last Spring-April, 1892. We have two or three more gray hairs
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in our head than you have. We are sure that we are as old as that for our consistorial records commence with the date of April 12, 1717, and our Baptismal record is complete from that date to the present time. There can be little doubt that there was preach- ing at the Raritan river where our city now stands as early as r703, and it seems to be beyond question that our first church building was erected by 1714-three years before the formal organization of the church.
While reflecting upon the matter of our collegiate existence for many years there came to my mind the parallelisms in the life of our two churches, and of these I desire to speak.
I. In Church Buildings. Your first edifice was described as " broader than it was deep," etc. Our first house of worship has been portrayed as follows :
The church of the " River and Lawrence Brook" stood front- ing the river. The structure was of wood, and, like most of the early churches, its breadth was greater than its depth. Its dimen- sions were 50 feet broad and 40 feet deep. There were seven pews on each side of the pulpit, and eight along the middle aisle. The total number of pews in the building was fifty and they accommodated about 300 persons.
When I first saw your present building I was struck with its similarity to ours. Yours is built of wood and ours of stone, but the general plan is the same. Your pews are arranged as ours, your galleries extend around three sides as ours, and the general impression of space and neatness and light are very much alike. Surely our ancestors were of one mind when deciding what style of building would be most suitable for the worship of the Triune God.
2. A second parallel is found in the fact that both congrega- tions enjoyed the ministrations of the same ministers. Your first
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pastor, Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, was our first pastor and during the same period of time from 1720 to 1748.
In the strictest sense we were then collegiate. During the next twenty-five years while you were served by two different pastors we were served by only one and the churches were independent, but your third pastor-Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh-was after- wards our third pastor. Shortly after leaving you he came to New Brunswick to be the first President of Queens College and to be pastor of our church. He was one of the original trustees of Queens College. He brought to us the results of his labor and experience among you and we were blessed with the fruits of his maturer years. The traditions of his faithfulness and efficiency still live. His grave is with us to this day and his memory is blessed.
Our good fortune as sister churches was to have the ministra- tions of these great and good men. We were similarly instructed in doctrine and doubtless in matters of discipline were handled alike, although their method might not have been like the preacher in New York State many years ago who settled things in a sum- mary fashion. Complaint was brought to him that an axe had been stolen and the parson, after listening to the statement, com- forted the loser of the edged tool by saying he would find his axe. On the following Sunday the domine took two cobble stones into the pulpit and at a certain point in the service paused and related what had come to his knowledge about a stolen axe and "now," said he, " I propose to throw this stone (raising his hand as if to throw) at the person who took that axe." Just then a nervous wife grabbed her husband by the arm and exclaimed, “ Dodge Jake or he'll hit you !" The parson needed only to add : "If you will call upon that man you may recover your axe."
Reference has been made to the esteem in which Dr. Harden- bergh was held here and to the deference shown Jufrow Harden-
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bergh. Well, I can assure you from what I know of our people one hundred years ago through their descendants, that we were not a whit behind you in these matters. If the whole congrega- tion remained standing until the Dr. and his estimable wife passed up the aisle and she was seated, we did none the less in New Brunswick.
3. A third parallel lies in the fact that both our churches have been mothers of ministers and missionaries-around you are gathered your clerical sons to-day and in a far distant land your spiritual life has its representation.
Our dear old church has always nursed her children on the mis- sionary idea and taught them the true missionary motive of obedi- ence to Christ's great command; consequently the list of her sons that have entered the gospel ministry is a long one and the names of those who have gone into foreign fields (both men and women) are conspicuous ; headed by no less a champion than David Abeel the pioneer missionary to Amoy, China.
4. Again our churches have had a similar experience in the way of revivals. Great seasons of refreshing have come to us time and again from the presence of the Lord. Only recently you had a thorough baptism of grace. It is recorded of Dr. Harden- bergh's ministry with us that it was almost a continuous revival- and the last four pastors have had experimental knowledge of the mighty power of God to bring many at one time to the feet of His dear Son. For these testimonials of the spirit's presence and power let us ever be thankful.
5. The last parallel of which I shall speak has to do with the present ; and if I seem to be very personal you will grant me that the conditions warrant such reference. These two churches once collegiate, and always so similar in life and development, are now served by two brothers-two Dutchmen-to the manor born and bred.
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