USA > New Jersey > Middlesex County > New Brunswick > Historical discourse delivered at the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the First Reformed Dutch Church, New Brunswick, N.J., October 1, 1867 > Part 14
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My valued friend and classmate, both in college and in the Seminary, Isaac M. Fisher, in a few months after my settle- ment here became pastor of the Bedminster church. A capi- tal theologian lie was, and a most able defender of the doc- trines of our church. No man among us in the Seminary was so familiar with the system of Dr. Livingston, and could more intelligently explain and illustrate it. His critical acumen had been sharpened by the great Hopkinsian controversy which had pervaded the New-York churches a few years be- fore; and with all its points, both theological and metaphysi- cal, he had made himself at home. A most honest and up- right man in his principles, he enjoyed the confidence of all who knew him, and the remarkably upright physical man seemed the index of the spirit within.
Rev. Jacob J. Schultz was located at the White House, and was one of the most earnest of preachers. He labored as one who had the best interests of his people at heart, and was blessed with large ingatherings to the fellowship of the churches to which he ministered. Every good enterprise found in him a hearty cooperator.
And there was Samuel A. Van Vranken, generous, warm- hearted, and ever enlivening by his sparkling remarks. It was said he had settled in Monmouth with solicitude for his health, as he had expectorated blood near the close of his student life. But certainly, on that score, the settlement proved most wise, for he became one of the most vigorous of men. The bosom friend of Dr. Ludlow, lie exceeded him in the animation of his style and in the emotional character of his preaching. In the midst of his people, he was in his glory. In view of his health, he did not in his early ministry give himself to books and to sermon-writing. His study, it was said, was the lawn in front of his house; and there, pacing to and fro, he wrought out, without pen or paper, his Sabbath preparations, and among his most intelligent hearers obtained the reputation of a most powerful preacher. It was with difficulty he was in-
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duced to leave a place where he was so happy. Providence brought him to the professorial office here after two pastoral changes, and now his remains lie in the westernmost portion of your graveyard.
But the man who out-topped all others was James S. Can- non-noble in form, dignified in manner, careful in speech, wise in counsel, the friend of all, especially of the young min- ister, and distinguished for his literary and theological attain- ments.
The doctor was brought into close relations with the Theo- logical Seminary by performing the service of Professor of Ecclesiastical History during the session of 1818 and 1819, (as was the case with Mr. Mabon ;) and his interest in the stu- dents, which was always warm, became very earnest, and made him their counselor and friend. He seemed like a venerated parent at Six Mile Run, to whom the students loved to repair for converse and advice. He was truly a Christian philoso- pher, looking out thoughtfully and calmly on the outside world, with its wave-like changes. His preaching was far from the sensational, which rings changes on a few exciting topics. Its range was over the vast field of Bible truth, rest- ing with deliglit on the Gospel and the sweet experience of its working in the Christian life. He subsequently came into dis -. tinct professorial relations with the Seminary, retiring from the pastoral office. And you know well how truly gentlemanly his whole bearing, how uniformly kind, how sympathizing, how exemplary his Christian walk, how elevated and how thorough his instruction, and how completely he secured the confidence and regard of all his pupils, either of the College or the Seminary. He was truly a great man, in the best and most desirable sense of the term.
My friends, I thank you for so kindly allowing me to carry you in a familiar strain through reminiscences to me so plea- sant, and, I trust, not uninteresting to you, many of whom are the descendants or the connections of those of whom I have spoken, or to whom I have referred. They are gone; but not without leaving a most solemn work for their successors. The old flock is divided into three folds, each having much to call out our gratitude. I rejoice with you in your enlargement,
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and in the promise for the future involved in it. To realize all, and still to advance to a higher development of Christian character, requires the earnest effort of all, and what encour- agement have you to make it ! The God of the fathers is your God. What a glorious starting-point does this day, with its charming services, furnish, and how worthily may this be made the mark of those who are in the vigor of life and of those rising to maturity !
To myself, this has been a most grateful day, and especially as it has followed another of most pleasant character. A week since, I preached to the people among whose fathers my pro- fession of the Saviour's name was made, and my first commu- nion was celebrated just fifty years ago this month, and be- fore whom my first sermon was preached; and now I have been in solemn service with the children, and the children's chil- dren, in the sanctuary where my ministerial life began. I ought to be thankful. I trust I am thankful, and I can well leave the future to my divine Master, to whom I would give all the glory.
On the conclusion of the address, the congregation unite in singing
PSALM XC. PART II. TUNE- Windsor.
Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home !
Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame, From everlasting Thou art God, To endless years the same.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away ; They fly, forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day.
Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Be Thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home.
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The evening service was concluded with prayer and the benediction by Rev. Dr. Ferris, and the great congregation separated.
Thus, through three services, occupying nearly the entire day, the interest of these anniversary exercises was main- tained. The expression was general that the occasion was of a most delightful and refreshing character, and had left im- pressions which would make it forever memorable to all who had been permitted to participate in these solemnities. We had "remembered the days of old," according to the divine direction. The history of God's dealings with the Church during a period of one hundred and fifty years, and of His grace to "the fathers," had been contemplated for our encou- ragement and strength. Hallowed and tender recollections had been awakened while worshiping in the venerable sanc- tuary which, for more than fifty years, had invited successive generations within its courts. Blessed seasons had been wit- nessed here by God's waiting people, on returning Sabbaths, as His Spirit was poured out in answer to prayer. From this communion of saints on earth multitudes have gone, rejoicing in hope, to join the Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven.
Under such auspicious circumstances has the First Reformed Dutch Church of New-Brunswick celebrated her One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary
ANNIVERSARY LESSONS.
A SERMON PREACHED OCTOBER 6, 1867,
BY REV. RICHARD H. STEELE, D.D.
" THE Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers."-1 KINGS 8:57.
WE have been permitted, in the providence of God, to cele- brate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of our church-an anniversary that has awakened attention . wherever the children of this congregation are scattered, and which will form an interesting topic of conversation as long as the present generation are upon the stage of life. It seems that, as a fitting conclusion to the exercises of this occasion, your pastor should endeavor to gather together its lessons, and repeat, on behalf of you all, the prayer of Solomon at the ded- ication of the temple, which was so appropriately selected as the motto of the whole services, "The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers."
Rest assured, my friends, that the interest of this occasion is not transient or circumscribed. It has left impressions upon our hearts which will abide with us always; and, as the facile pen of the reporter shall spread round a circle of unusual width the story of our religious festival, it will form the topic of thought and prayer in many distant families. God has been with us in this series of meetings. If ever Heaven has smiled propitiously upon Christian gatherings, ours is the occasion. The day has been a joyful one in New-Brunswick; and we, who worship at the old altar and dwell at the old homestead, have not misinterpreted the indications of Providence in gather- ing together the children of the fathers and their descendants
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to this feast of memory. The broad invitation that we cir- culated; the recollections that have been awakened; the won- derful history that has been recited of these pioneers of the covenant, who so many generations ago laid the foundation of our institutions of religion, and learning, and government; the rich tone of spiritual feeling that pervaded our assemblies; and the new purposes formed in respect to the interest we shall hereafter take in the cause of Christ, all testify to the hold this anniversary has taken upon our minds and hearts. I re- peat it: The story of our coming together on this high festi- val occasion will be rehearsed around many a fireside and to future generations. An interest which is not transient or local now surrounds the spot where it pleased God to plant, one hun- dred and fifty years ago, this goodly vine. Those who know us and have worshiped with us, as well as strangers who have never stood within these gates, will fix on us their minds as they speak of our remarkable history.
In making the improvement of the occasion which the whole subject suggests, I will not follow any formal analysis of the theme, but will lead you with me along a path of fami- liar reminiscence and encouragement, entreating the blessing, "The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers."
Our fathers, and God with them. After the record which has been reengraved upon their monuments, can we doubt the reality ? I think of these men once more, as we have read their names and refreshed our memories with their virtues. When we reflect upon the hardships experienced by the first settlers in this new land, the privations, the labor, the dangers incident to this then unbroken wilderness, can there be room to doubt the special providence of God in selecting the agents who should found, and in leading them to the place where they should erect, this temple of worship and praise, the first religious organization in our goodly city? Was it the merest accident that they were led to pitch their habitations in this fertile land, coursed by this noble river, surrounded by these broad fields of inviting husbandry, in this genial climate, mid- way between the stern winters which crown with frost and ice the northern latitude and the enervating heat and sickness incident to a southern clime? Let those believe who may that
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such a movement as this is only human in its conception and results; that the order of events that peopled this section of our State with that sturdy Batavian race, whose excellences we have commemorated, was a mere random adventure of men who knew not where they were going, or what was the end of their mission; we, who have faith in Providence, not blind but wise, not a coercive necessity but an intelligent pur- pose, will believe that the Lord Jehovah was with our fathers.
When I think of those praying men who crowded around that noble minister, Rev. Theodorus J. Frelinghuysen, who broke ground for the Gospel in this new territory, the compan- ion and colaborer with Gilbert Tennent, George Whitefield, and President Edwards-whose grave, like that of Moses, no man knows unto this day; when I think how the good minis- ter, Mr. Leydt, passed almost from his pulpit to the grave amid the lamentations of the people; when I think how all the expectations of this church were disappointed as they bowed in submission to the will of Providence in the early removal of Dr. Hardenbergh, while they received the consola- tion administered to them in the funeral sermon preached at his burial by Dominie Van Harlingen, from the text, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof;" when I think how hearts were almost broken at the great be- reavement experienced in the death of Dr. Condict; when I. recall the names of all these ministers and their successors, and behold the foundations they have laid, the seed they have sown, and the harvests they have gathered, I am ready to re- peat, what has come out all along in our narrative, "This is the Lord's doing ; it is marvelous in our eyes."
How different is our position to-day from that of those who first came to this field with the Gospel of salvation! It has been impossible for me, during the preparation of my Histori- cal Discourse-and I confess that it has given me two years of labor and thought, in the midst of other duties, feeling my way through a wilderness which had never been traveled, and gathering materials for the first one hundred years from letters, scraps of newspapers, old wills and deeds, Bible records, and inscriptions on the old brown tombstones-it has been im- possible, in the midst of it all, to keep from my mind that old
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building, with its shingled sides, and steep roof, and unpainted interior, and uncarpeted aisles, in Burnet street, where your forefathers worshiped God in the olden time, and contrast it with the quiet Sabbaths which have shed around us their hal- lowed influence in this ample tabernacle and these crowded congregations. We can not but view with emotion the obscure origin of some vast river, and trace it in its expanding flow onward in its course until it mingles its waters with the great reservoir of ocean. Then it is the little rivulet tinkling through the valley ; now it is the broad river on whose bosom the com- merce of a nation floats. So, with emotions of wonder and thanksgiving to God, we trace the origin of those streams of moral and spiritual influence which have blessed our world, and are still accumulating strength and vigor with the lapse of years, and whose ultimate power for good it is almost impossi- ble for us to conceive. Truly, that little band, who first planted here the Gospel of our precious Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, might well be spoken of, in the beautiful figure of the Psalm- ist, as "an handful of corn on the top of the mountain." And even now the prediction has been fulfilled, for the fruit thereof has shaken like Lebanon.
"They little thought how pure a light, With years, would gather round that day ; How love would keep their memories bright; How wide a realm their sons would sway !"
A review of the history of our church, when it shall be spread out before you, will exhibit the fact that the early founders of our religious institutions were men who loved the word of God, and who made their appeal to it as the only in- fallible rule of faith and practice.
There are still in existence a few venerable copies of the Bible, in the native language of the Hollanders, preserved as heir-looms in the families of their descendants. These well- read pages attest how intelligently and tenaciously they ad- hered unto God's testimonies. If they sought for comfort, they found it in the Holy Scriptures; if they needed inspira- tion, they caught it from the Old and the New Testament ; if they desired strength, they sought it in these lively ora-
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cles ; if they panted after holiness, they communed with the Holy Ghost in the volume which was written by Him. They had few books to adorn their dwellings; and in most instances a large family Bible, with its antique binding and strange plates and clasps of ponderous brass; a psalm-book ; and a volume of sermons prepared by some famous divine of the Netherlands-a Brakel, a Van Derkemp, a Hellenbrook, a Marck-constituted the entire religious educational apparatus of the household. But this word of God they loved. Some of you remember how these pious men and women of the past generation pored over these sacred pages. Amid all privations, they were sustained by the principles and pro- inises treasured, as they believed, for God's people in the Book of the Lord. Its biographies of the patriarchs, its historical narratives, its predictions of the Messiah, its precious psalms, its proverbs and parables, its Gospels of the Saviour, its apoca- lyptic vision of heaven, were familiar lessons from infancy to old age. They read the Bible daily, and large portions of it were committed to memory. They taught their children to read it and reverence its inspired teachings. And some of those godly men became expounders of the word of God, and their names have been handed down to us as "helpers " in the Gospel of our Lord.
My friends, in the reverence in which they held, and the attachment which they cherished for, the Bible, the Dutch fathers are examples to us. It is emphatically the book for the family and the race. To it we must come at last for all that higher knowledge which relates to our origin and our destiny, the true aim of life and the real dignity of rational and intelli- gent beings. Let the pleasing custom be perpetuated of pre- serving the genealogical record of the household in the family Bible, written between the Old and New Testaments, to be consulted by those who come after us, telling the story of births, and baptisms, and marriages, and burials, from genera- tion to generation. Familiarize your own minds with its blessed language, teach your children its lessons of heavenly truth ; and as did the fathers, so do you take this best of all books as the guide, the instructor, the light, and life, and law of the house. "There," said one of the pastors of this church,
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when he was dying, " there is the word of God, which has an abundance of knowledge and grace. The Lord has given you reason, and a capacity for knowing and loving him; let that word be your teacher, and you will experience riches of grace."
Again, the fathers of this church were men of intelligent and earnest piety. I speak now of their religious character, as moulded and developed under the instructions of the early min- isters of this church. After the great conflict through which Dominie Frelinghuysen passed with the formal element which prevailed throughout this whole region, he gathered into the communion a body of men who were spiritual, praying, and devoted to the cause of Christ. They were sound in their views of the truth ; in their system of religious belief, they adopted the catechisms and confessions of faith of the Re- formed Church ; in their method of instruction in the house- hold, they followed the direction of the Scriptures, and taught their children out of the word of God, and trained them sys- tematically in the doctrines and standards in which they them- selves had been educated in the fatherland. They were the children of the covenant. They had faith in God, and made sacrifices to promote his honor. They looked beyond their own immediate wants, and labored directly for the welfare of those who were to come after them. They saw the hand of God before them leading the way, and they followed his direc- tions. The whole history of this church is replete with the evidence that ministers and people sought the immediate guid- ance of God. We might speak of the deficiencies in their character, and it would be no difficult matter to discover points in which they failed ; but we will leave this ungracious task for those whose taste prefers to look at their infirmities and infelicities rather than upon those traits which bear the evi- dence of a sterling character. We prefer to think of these men as trained under the ministry of that fearless herald of the Gospel who always felt that he was sent to this field by a most direct interposition of Providence, and who would adhere to his purpose of preaching the doctrines of grace though there rose up the clamor of great opposition against the truth. We would think of them as pitching their habitations in this then unbroken wilderness, opening for themselves a path
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through the forest ; worshiping God in the first sanctuary erected in the interior of our State by the church of our order ; having in their house the ordinance of family worship, that first care of the Christian parent; planting the seminary of learning by the side of the Christian sanctuary ; and we will find in all these things much that we can admire in our New- Brunswick ancestors.
And the piety of these men was sincere, a serious joy in God lighting up their countenances, and inspiring within them, amid all their hardships, the blessedness of hope. Rev. Gil- bert Tennent, who was on terms of special intimacy with his co-laborer in this city, Rev. Mr. Frelinghuysen, has left the record that his ministry was eminently blessed here, and that those who were in membership with the church " appeared to be converted persons, by their soundness of principles, Chris- tian experience, and pious example." He describes, in one of his letters, the work of grace which was here enjoyed, and he says, " I may further observe that frequently, at sacramen- tal seasons in New-Brunswick, there have been signal dis- plays of the divine power and presence. Divers have been convinced of sin by the sermons there preached, some con- verted, and many affected by the love of God in Jesus Christ. Oh ! the sweet meltings that I have seen on such occasions among many. New-Brunswick did then look like a field that the Lord had blessed. It was like a little Jerusalem, to which the scattered tribes with eager haste repaired on sacramental solemnities, and there they fed on the fatness of God's house, and drank of the rivers of his pleasure."
There are many other inviting pages in the history of the fathers, every one rich in instructive lessons. We could speak of their patriotism, and show you that these men loved their country and hated oppression. The teachings of history in the land from whence they came, while it exhibited the doctrine of toleration in all civil and ecclesiastical matters, at the same time furnished precedents which have been wrought out in the struggles through which our own nation has passed. The United Provinces of the Netherlands had a Declaration of In- dependence long before that more renowned instrument which bound into one nation the United States of America. They
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had a constitutional government in opposition to hereditary power. They had a motto-" Unity makes might"-which is hardly inferior to that of our own country, which is intended to express the union of these States. It is not surprising that such men gave themselves to the cause of their country, and suffered for this heritage which they have transmitted unto us.
We could speak of the intellectual character of the fathers ; and, while not claiming for them any considerable degree of culture and learning, yet it might be shown that, for the times and poverty of advantages which they enjoyed, they were not devoid of intelligence, and had an eye to the prospective wants of the church. Coming from that Dutch republic which had its system of free schools, which so caught the attention of the Puritans in their exile, as they saw it in successful operation, that they made it their model on the settlement of New-Eng- land, it is not surprising that the first minister brought with him to this field of labor the "well-educated schoolmaster," Jacobus Schureman, a "gentleman who was respectable for his literary acquirements as well as for his piety," and planted the school-house by the side of the church. First of all, they made provision for the permanent establishment of religious institutions, and then, at great sacrifice, they furnished facili- ties for the highest forms of education, establishing the fifth College in the North-American colonies, and planting the first Theological Seminary in our land. These points, with others, are inviting. But the evidence is sufficient that the Lord Je- hovah was with the fathers. He sent them to this field, and bestowed on them His blessing. And we have that in their record which is to us a ground of thanksgiving.
It seems to us, as we study the history of the church, that it is a special providence of God in giving to our American Zion, in the various branches of her organization, a fatherland, from which they have received the peculiar type of their theology and order. The Scotch Presbyterians hail from the hills and valleys of that land of martyrs, which is redolent with the piety of those suffering heroes who so long resisted the tyranny of a court that knew not God nor the best interests of the state. And is it any wonder that they think to-day with joy- ful pride how their ancestors, of a noble faith and a simple
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