USA > New Jersey > Middlesex County > Piscataway > History of the First Baptist Church of Piscataway : with an account of its bi-centennial celebration, June 20th, 1889, and sketches of pioneer progenitors of Piscataway planters > Part 9
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The Baptists of those days were a " feeble folk." A few little churches here and there, liable to bitter persecution, except in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland; and whether perse- cuted or not, they were of so little account in the eyes of the great world as to be hardly deemed worthy of notice. Yet, clearly under-
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standing those scriptural principles which it was not given to the great ones of church and state to receive or to respect, our denominational ancestors held these principles tenaciously and consistently. They were true to the truth at any cost. They would have sealed their testi- mony with their blood.
To-day, behold this great republic, one of the mightiest powers of earth, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Polar snows to the tropic seas ! The home of sixty millions of people ; it is filled with energy, enterprise and progress. I believe that our country has been preserved through many dangers and conflicts, that it may be the place where great problems of human welfare and of redemption may find room and scope for being worked out fittingly and on a vast scale. By no accident have these United States become such a favored nation, with such singular advantages of position, soil, freedom, and every element of greatness.
The Baptists have had a growth here that is simply marvelous. Their numbers run into the millions, and their wealth, power, learning and influence are such as our fathers never dreamed of. Our princi- ples, once bitterly scorned, have been adopted in part by almost all Protestant Christians in Europe and America. The battle is not over ; but religious liberty has completely triumphed here, and is advancing to a complete triumph in Europe. Several pedobaptist denominations, by a happy inconsistency, require evidence of conversion in order to full membership, and if we hold fast to the faith delivered once for all to the saints and testify to the truth in word and deed, it would seem that the time must be at hand when God's scattered and divided child- ren shall become one flock.
What is there before us? Oh! an impenetrable veil hides the future from our vision, and we have no gift of prophecy that might enable us to draw it back and foretell what is to be in the days to come. But we know that principles will work themselves out in their appropriate lines ; that like causes will produce like effects ; that all things follow their tendencies.
Will our Baptist churches be able to stem the tide of worldliness ? They have grown great under the sharp discipline of persecution, re- proach and poverty. Will they withstand the severer trials and tempta- tions born of wealth, affluence and peace? Will they hold fast to all the truth as firmly as they maintain immersion? Will they resist all tendencies of the "New Theology" and the " Down Grade"? Will they cling with undiminished faith to the absolute inspiration of the Scrip- tures, to the divinity and atonement of Jesus, and to the doctrines of Sovereign Grace-those great truths, often called Calvinistic, which are the very heart and strength of Christianity? Will they resist the subtle temptation to practically abandon their distinctive tenet of the absolute separation of Church and State-of the spiritual and secular spheres ? Will they remember that the Church is a spiritual body, commanded to seek purely spiritual ends by exclusively spiritual means? Will they refuse the tempter's insidious and plausible suggestion that we may now rule, reform and regenerate the world, if the Church will only call for
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the help of magistrates and legislators, and will earnestly engage in political strife?
On the answer which we shall give to such questions depends the future of our beloved denomination. Here the ways part-the way to grander growth, greater purity and mightier power, and the way to decadence, feebleness and apostasy.
I am no prophet-I cannot foresee what of good or evil the next hundred or two hundred years will bring to us, if indeed the Lord does not come. But I know that so long as the present age shall last, He will always have a seed to serve Him, a people chosen from the begin- ning to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. I know that He will always have His faithful witnesses who will proclaim His truth and if need be, suffer for it. I know that sooner or later He will come in glory, to establish his kingdom-to renew the heavens and the earth and to put his people in possession of their inheritance. I know that if we follow Him faithfully and die before He comes, we shall enter at once upon the higher life and with Him joyfully wait for the grand consummation. Let us, then, be of good courage and serve our Lord with a true heart and with supreme devotion,
Beyond the veil of blinded sense The Risen One builds our residence ; There may we meet some golden day And live and love in bliss for aye.
ADDRESS BY Bon. BORATIO GATES JONES,
President of Trustees of the Philadelphia Association.
I, too, with my respected associate, Rev. Dr. Willmarth, feel most highly honored in having been invited by your venerable Church to participate in your bi-centennial services. Dr. Willmarth, the modera- tor of our Association, has well stated the exact position we now occupy, and it scarcely seems necessary that I should say anything more. But having been connected with that ancient body, through my father and my grandfather and my cousins Abel and Enoch Morgan, Benjamin Griffith and Obadiah Holmes, for one hundred and seventy- nine years, it gives me most peculiar pleasure to be with you to-day.
For twenty-two years I have been President of our corporation, and, as you may suppose, feel a deep interest in all that pertains to our Baptist Zion. For New Jersey I have a special regard, as my grand- father, Rev. David Jones, the chaplain of General Wayne during the Revolution and the Indian wars of 1794-6, was a student at Isaac Eaton's Academy at Hopewell, the first Baptist Academy in America, and gave to Rhode Island College its first president, the Rev. Dr. James Manning.
THE PISCATAWAY BAPTIST CHURCH.
I also look upon New Jersey, and especially upon the Middletown Church, with a kind of sentimental affection, for while studying Divinity under his cousin, Abel Morgan, my grandfather fell in love-a habit I believe still quite common among theological students of the present day- with a handsome young lady named Anne Stillwell, who was a descend- ant of the martyr Obadiah Holmes, who in 1651 was cruelly whipped on Boston Common for having preached the Gospel at Lynn, without any authority from the "Standing Order " of Massachusetts Bay. Is it any wonder, Mr. Chairman, that to-day I feel proud of New Jersey ?
And now, as I heard you intimate when introducing me, you wish me to tell you what we of the Philadelphia Association have been doing since the Piscataway Church in 1792 joined the New York Association. Well, sir, we have endeavored to keep the faith as it was once delivered to the saints. We have tried to hold fast the truths of the Gospel as contained in the Confession of Faith adopted by us in 1742. We have not followed cunningly devised fables, and if any of our ministers chance to do so, we let them go, and they are seldom heard of after- wards.
When you left us we had in our Association fifty-three churches, and now we have ninety-one. Then we had 3,253 members, now we have 27,083. Since then we organized in Philadelphia the Baptist Triennial Convention, now the Missionary Union, but Jersey took an active part in that convention. We have also formed there the American Baptist Publication Society, whose colporteurs and books are to be found in nearly every State of the Union ; we have also founded the Lewisburg (now Bucknell) University, and at Upland, near Philadelphia, we have The Crozer Theological Seminary, with an endowment fund of $351,000. What have we done ? Why, my dear brother, we have formed acade- mies and schools throughout the State, and in our Association we have a "Building Fund" to lend money to feeble churches without interest, repaying ten per cent. of the principal each year, and also a "Ministers' and Widows' Fund," for the care and support of needy Ministers and their Widows, and we have also the Baptist Home, of Philadelphia, where we now have over seventy needy Baptist women ; and we also have a Baptist Orphanage. Besides these, we have at Germantown an institution called "The George Nugent Home for Baptists," founded by that noble man of God, George Nugent, the senior deacon of the Second Baptist Church of Germantown, where Baptist ministers and their wives over the age of sixty years, from any State of the Union, can find a home. It is my pleasure to refer to this, because I am Trustee under the will of Mr. Nugent, and President of the Board of Trustees of the Home. These are only a few of the good things we have been doing since you left us in 1792.
And now, Mr. Chairman, I think my time is up, and yet I would like to know what the Piscataway Church has been doing since 1792. I have listened very attentively to what my old friend and college class- mate, James Fuller Brown, D. D., has been telling about your Church. You have done great good and have had considerable trouble about trifling matters-a very natural state of affairs in this state of probation
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One chief trouble was on the question of marrying a deceased wife's sister. Is there anything in the New Testament on the subject? If not, then why say that we are bound by the Jewish laws ? In our Associa- tion we do not now trouble ourselves about such matters. If members of our churches choose to marry ladies old enough to be their grand- mothers, we don't censure them for so doing, believing they will sooner or later find they have made a grand mistake.
But, Mr. Chairman, my time is more than up, and I must close. I tender to you and your Church my best wishes for your prosperity in all future time. To me this day has been one of joy, because I have seen so many dear friends ; and yet of sadness, for I know that most of us will never meet again.
My brethren and sisters, as I have listened to the organ's nctes filling this house and dying away in the far off distance-as I have heard the voices of the choir blending their sweet songs in unison, I have fancied that there were echoes from the music of other lands unseen. I have almost felt there were angelic bands around us to-day-bands of the sainted dead who once met in this hallowed spot, striking their celestial harps and sending forth sweet and heavenly strains,
" Like the sound of a host on their homeward march, The songs of their Fatherland singing."
ADDRESS BY
- REV. H. ARMSTRONG.
Pastor of the New Brooklyn Baptist Church.
The Samptown Baptist Church was constituted 1792 by twenty- one members drawing letters from the Scotch Plains Church for that purpose. It had at that time, and for many years a large territory as its field, and was much prospered. Subsequently by the growth of Plain- field, New Market and Dunelen, its field became circumscribed, and no growth of population in its locality-congregations depleted. A colony went out for the constitution of Plainfield Baptist Church, and in 1852 another colony went out to form the New Market Church. And from this date for some twenty years there was gradual decline and the brethren became much discouraged. In August, 1878, Rev. A. Armstrong was called to the pastorate. And as the Lord would have it the old edifice took fire from a passing locomotive on Wednes- day, April 25th, 1879, and in two hours it was reduced to ashes. The Church and pastor gathered up courage, and having an insurance upon the old house of $2,000, started a subscription and very soon found it safe to secure a lot in New Brooklyn, upon which a new edifice was erected and paid for. And the congregation entered its new home on January Ist, 1880, The Church, with new house in a new location,
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dropped the name Samptown, which seemed without any significance, and took the corporate name of New Brooklyn. The Church has taken on new life and activity, and experienced a good degree of pros- perity-is up with the times in its work of benevolence-and promptly meets all financial responsibilities with satisfaction and pleasure.
It has pleased the Lord to grant a very precious and powerful work of grace this year (1889), there have been added to the Church fellowship forty-four persons, twenty-eight of whom were received by baptism.
The Church by her delegates to this your Bi-centennial, sends greeting and congratulation upon your green old age of vitality and great prosperity, hoping that the loving fraternity that has so long existed between daughter and grandmother, may abide and increase as the years go by.
ADDRESS BY - REV. R. C. APPLEGARTR, JR.
Pastor of the New Brunswick First Baptist Church.
MY BROTHER PASTOR, AND SISTERS AND BRETHREN OF THE PISCAT- AWAY CHURCH :
I count myself happy to be the bearer of the hearty greetings of your third daughter now seventy-three (73) years of age. In common with all your children, she would rise to call you blessed, on this the bi-centennial anniversary of your natal day. Venerable and increased in years you are, but not decrepit. Age has touched you not to enfeeble, but rather to ripen in all noble qualities and graces. We are proud of you, and, though the lines of time have furrowed your once fair face, they make that face none the less, but all the more charming, because they are the beautiful tracery of love-a love which has spent and is spending itself in doing good.
Reviewing your history of two hundred years, and noticing the constancy with which you have maintained the integrity of the truth once delivered to the saints, and also considering the remarkable fact that these twenty decades are girdled with but eleven pastorates-the fact itself being eloquent of praise for your steadfastness-we look upon you to-night as "a tree planted by the rivers of waters, bringing forth fruit in your season ; your leaf also not withering and prosper- ing in whatsoever you do." So, in the grace of our Heavenly Father, may it ever be! Because, then, of what you are and of what you have done, your third daughter gladly honors you on this glad occasion. And, it may be, you are not altogether ashamed of your daughter. She has endeavored to do virtuously, and, though she has not excelled, she has not totally failed.
We have three children and a baby ; three white and one black, and we glory in the life of our colored child,
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Beginning life in a place preoccupied by another denomination, tethered by apparently unyielding circumstances, and obliged, conse- quently, to work between narrow lines, we have sought to hang the glory of our Christian life upon all surroundings ; and, now, it may be interesting to you to know that, as the result of our work in that neighboring city, where our lot is cast, we, to-night, number one in every nineteen of the population.
Your third child herself has grown from a little one to be 575 members strong, and has been enabled during these years to con- tribute to the doing of the Lord's work in the world about $700,000.
We did not go far from home, nor are we ashamed to be told that we are tied to our mother's apron strings. We staid by you, not because we were afraid to go away, but because we loved you and wanted to be near you, and we can truly say that, " The lines have fallen unto us in pleasant places ; yea, we have a goodly heritage." But whatever we have been permitted to do in the great cause of our Lord, we are conscious of our indebtedness to you, and gratefully ac- knowledge it. We were well born and we glory in our ancestry. The seed, no larger than a grain of mustard, which was sown here two hundred years ago, has grown to be a great tree, and we are only one of the branches. We did not bear the stock, the stock bore us ; and to the stock belongs the praise we so gladly bring to you to-night.
But it ill becomes me to occupy more time, knowing how full is the program of exercises for this evening. Let me, in conclusion, wish for you and for ourselves a future more glorious, in every good word and work than we have known in the past, bright and blessed as that past has been.
ADDRESS BY -
D. J. YERKES, D.D.
Pastor of the Plainfield First Baptist Church.
BRETHREN AND FRIENDS :
It is a real and great pleasure to me to be here to speak in behalf of the First Church of Plainfield, and to bring to you her congratula- tions on this bi-centennial occasion. With others, children, grand- children and great grandchildren, we come to sit at the family board. We come to give honor to the already honored mother and to join our thanks with hers to God for His mercy to her and to us. And while we all are happy in being here, you also must be glad that your children have come home and gathered about the old hearthstone to talk about the good old times and to tell you of the ways of the Lord with them.
When children are born to them and the responsibilities of family life are felt by the married pair, they have an anxious solicitude for the
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little ones that play and prattle about the house. However happy in their children, their loving care for them makes burdens,-burdens it is pleasant to bear. But as the children grow older the burdens become heavier, for then the parents are concerned that the children may be of upright character and well settled in life, and if the parents be Christians that they may serve and honor God. And then when the family circles are widened the old folks who have become grand parents and great grand parents, take the little ones into their hearts and very likely, as they forecast the future of these, it is to them filled with gloomy forebodings.
But no happier lot falls to parents in this world than to see their children and their children's children well to do in life-happily settled . and walking in the fear of God. Therefore you ought to be happy to-day when your children and their children come to greet you, for since they went out from the old home to set up housekeeping and to do for themselves, they have followed in your example, have kept the faith as you have kept it, tried to serve the Master as you have served Him, and not one of them has brought reproach upon the honored family name.
We greet you on this the two hundreth anniversary of your exist- ence. Mighty changes have taken place in the world within these two hundred years. Things that were have changed. Some have passed away-governments, opinions, doctrines. New things have come, had their day and are gone, but here is this old Church the same still, with all the strength of fresh and vigorous life. In the moral and religious world age does not signify decay. The old things are not the dying
things. They last and grow old because of the power of life within them that resists decay. New things come and go because they have not strength to survive the conflicts that try them. And the new things that last, do so because they have ability to resist decay and change, have capacity to grow old. We have old hymns and tunes which gen- erations of our fathers have sung, and they are old just because there is something in them that made them last. The blessed doctrines of grace are old, because the truths of God which they hold have kept them alive in the hearts and faith of His people. Therefore it is that the good old age of this mother Church is not suggestive of approach - ing dissolution, but of the power of that life from which come the freshness and strength of perpetual youth.
This people have built new houses of worship, moving from the old into the new. Godly ministers have labored and died among them, and some left them for other fields; generations of men who worshipped on this spot have died, but the Church remains with power unabated, her faith established, her hope undimmed, and still holding forth the word of life. The faith she has kept has kept her. Had she denied the faith, the breath of spiritual life had left her long ago and she would now be dead. But "built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone," she has continued to live and will live by the power of the living Christ.
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The Church for which I speak was organized 1818. There have been upon her roll of membership about 1,800 members. The present membership is over 800. The Church has had during the seventy-one years of her existence only four pastors, Jacob Randolph, Daniel T. Hill, Simeon J. Drake and the present pastor. The Church has fol- lowed the mother Church in the matter of long pastorates. And from you the First Church at Plainfield has derived a strain of noble blood. On our Church rolls are the Randolphs, Drakes, Mannings, Runyons, Dunns, Stelles, Boices, Smalleys, Brokaws and others of the old Pis- cataway stock. And from time to time you have replenished our Church with the blood of a right royal lineage, and we are glad to say that no church was ever blessed with truer, better men and women than some among us who have borne these honored names.
Nor would we forget that we have received a goodly heritage in' the sound doctrine which you have transmitted to your posterity. It is ours by direct line through the Samptown and Scotch Plains churches, both of whom have kept it uncontaminated. The Lord is our only Lord and Master and his word our only rule of doctrine and practice, and yet the truth as you have held it through all these years, has proclaimed the right way of the Lord. That is the truth to which we hold. And one fact is worthy of mention-that two men, Jacob Randolph and Simeon J. Drake, who did so much to establish the Church in doctrine were of Piscataway stock. May we all, mother and children stand fast in the faith once delivered to the saints-fight the good fight of faith, run the race set before us, keep the faith-ambitious for no crown save the crown of righteousness which the Lord shall give to all them that love his appearing.
ADDRESS BY
REV. J. H. GUBBERLEY.
Pastor of the New Market Baptist Church.
Mr. Chairman and kind friends: It is with sincere pleasure that I bear to you on this occasion the hearty congratulations of the Church which I serve. It is surely a momentous epoch in your history. I have read of a wonderful grape vine in the grounds of the palace of Hampton Court, near London, which is over one hundred years old ; and for all that time it has not ceased growing and burdening itself yearly with numerous clusters of fruit.
Here is a vine a branch of the living vine, which is two hundred years old, nor has it, taking its history as a whole, ever ceased growing and bearing fruit.
It has outlived successive generations of men, and thus on earth the spiritual transcends the natural. Though men die, principles live.
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The principles of the religion of Jesus, incorporated into His Church, and faithfully guarded, are imperishable.
" The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."
A Church will fulfill its mission in the world only so long as it embodies the truth as it is in Jesus. "He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."
We rejoice with you, brethren, in your continuous prosperity. The present speaks for the past. Yonder tree stands burdened with foliage and fruit, because each successive year of its life, its leaves un- folding from deepest rootlet to topmost branch added strength to the tree. The present state of this venerable mother of churches reflects credit upon the names of the fathers who are dead "as well as upon her living members.
" Their works do follow them," and their mantles have fallen upon others no less worthy. We rejoice that this day we can claim consanguinity with you, though our relationship be distant. But we count ourselves as a church particularly happy in the affiliation of neighborhood and family ties. The honored names mentioned in your history to-day are names familiar to us, and they remind us with pleasure that we are vitally connected with the social fabric which adorns this community.
May those strong natural ties grow firmer with years, and be held doubly sacred through the sanctifying grace of our common Redeemer. Men shall then say with pride : Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity ;" and even this shall remain a witness to the power of the religion of Jesus Christ.
We congratulate you on this, one of the proudest days of your existence, for your honored past, for your delightful present, and for your auspicious future, and may the wide streams of influence which go out from you this day become deepened and extended by the in- dwelling spirit of God, until time shall be no more.
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