USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Orange > The First Church, Orange, N. J. : one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, November 24 and 25, 1869 > Part 4
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the spread of the Gospel among the unevangelized, may be inferred from his uniting with a number of other ministers, in this country and in Scotland, in a weekly and a quarterly concert of prayer for this end.
But it would be unpardonable in me not to refer to Mr. Smith's connection with the college of New Jersey, of which he was a trustee from 1750 till his death, in 1762; for a brief time its acting President ; and always its ardent and de- voted friend. With a brief account of this matter, I shall close these desultory remarks, already too protracted.
The first charter of the College of New Jersey dated from the year 1746. It was actually organ- ized in May, 1747. Rev. Mr. Dickinson, of Eliza- bethtown, was its first President; and as Mr. Smith was engaged as his assistant, he may be styled the first usher or tutor in the college. Upon the death of Mr. Dickinson, within the brief period of four months after the organization of the col- lege, it was removed to Newark, and placed under the presidency of Rev. Aaron Burr, pastor of the
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church in that place. The first Commencement was held in the Newark meeting-house, when a class of six graduated ; one of the members being Hon. Richard Stockton, Chief Justice of the State of New Jersey, a member of the Continental Con- gress, and a signer of the Declaration of Indepen- dence. The second in New Brunswick. The sub- sequent Commencements in Newark, generally in the Court House, until 1756. After which it was. removed to Princeton, to the new edifice erected for it, named after William, Prince of Orange, Nassau Hall.
President Burr dying two days before the first Commencement in Princeton, Rev. Caleb Smith preached his funeral sermon, by appointment of the Board of Trustees; a discourse which was sub- sequently published at their request. Jonathan Edwards being chosen Mr. Burr's successor, Mr. Smith and John Brainerd were, by vote of trustees of the college, requested to go to Stockbridge, to attend the ecclesiastical council to convene relative to his dismission, with the view of obtaining his release from the Indian congregation to which he
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was at that time ministering. The untimely death of Mr. Edwards, which occurred about two months `after he reached Princeton, left the college once more without a head. A President was accord. ingly chosen, and Mr. Smith placed upon the com- mittee to make arrangements for his removal. Meanwhile Mr. Smith was himself appointed to act as President of the college until the next meeting of the Trustees. At that meeting, it appearing that the President elect had declined, Mr. Smith was requested to continue to preside in the college until the next annual Commencement, and to con- fer the degrees upon the candidates. The Presi- dency of the college at that time involved not only giving instruction, and the oversight of the institu- tion, but preaching in the college chapel, which was the only place of public worship in Princeton, and was accordingly attended by the inhabitants of the town, and the pews rented to occupants as in other churches. During this time Mr. Smith con- tinued to preach one Sabbath in four in his own charge ; and the Synod directed the Presbytery of New Brunswick to assist, to their utmost, in sup-
*
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plying his congregation. The choice of the Trus- tees next fell upon Mr. Samuel Davies, who first declined, but afterward accepted the appointment ; this favorable result being largely due, as it would appear, to the personal influence of Mr. Smith, who was upon the committee to secure his accept- ance and arrange for his removal.
As an indication of the large and comprehensive views which were at that time entertained regard- ing education and educational institutions, and the schemes which were projected for their elevation and improvement, it is deserving of mention that Mr. Smith presented to the Trustees a plan of union among the several colleges in the American Provinces, which had been drawn up by President Clap, of Yale College. No action was taken upon this paper at the time, or subsequently, so far as is known. But I may say that this suggestion was recently renewed by President McCosh, of Princeton, in his inaugural address. I now quote the words of Dr. McCosh : "I have sometimes thought that, as Oxford University combines some twenty-two colleges, and Cambridge eighteen, so
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there might in this country be a combination of colleges in one university. Some such combination as this, while it would promote a wholesome rivalry among the colleges, would at the same time keep up the standard of erudition. Another benefit would arise: the examination of candidates being conducted, not by those who taught them, but by elected examiners, would give a high and catholic tone to the teaching in the col- leges." There is no doubt that if this were prac- ticable, valuable and important ends would be accomplished by it.
I have said enough to show that Mr. Smith yielded to none in his interest in the cause of education generally, and in his devotion to the welfare of the College of New Jersey, which was the child of the Synod, cherished by the whole body of the Presbyterian church, and whose name, without being exclusive or sectarian, has ever been identified with sound learning and with staunch Presbyterianism.
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MURAL TABLET.
ERECTED NOV. 24, 1869,
TO THE MEMORY OF
The FIRST TWO MINISTERS of this Parish :
REVP DANIEL TAYLOR
His death, Jany 8, 1747-8, at the age of 56, Closed a pastorate of about 25 years.
REVP CALEB SMITH
Ordained and installed Nov. 30, 1748, Died Oct. 22, 1762, Aged 39.
Their remains await the resurrection among those of their flock in the Parish burying-place.
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IV.
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE BY
REV. E. H. GILLETT, D. D.
" This shall be written for the generation to come ; and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord."
PSALM cii: 18.
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
HE life of an institution is not necessarily like that of a man, bounded by a period of three-score years and ten. If, like a local church, it has in it the elements of permanence, if its roots strike deep into the soil of social sym- pathy, if it is forever assimilating to itself the materials around it, it may endure for ages. It may see generations after generations pass away, and the moss gather on their grave-stones : it may look down on changes of dynasties and govern- ments : it may witness social and civil revolutions, forever young and fresh, while the hamlet becomes a village, and the village a city ; while the grandest structures of human art crumble to decay, and the records of centuries moulder back to dust.
To stand by the side of such an institution, and to look up at it, is to invoke sacred memories of
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the past. And this is our position now. More than four successive generations, that have wor- shipped here, have passed away, and we gather, as it were, over their dust, to commemorate the progress and review the history of what they planted and cherished; and under the shadow of this tree of centuries we look upward and around us, not to the spectacle of dead branches and withered leaves, but of freshness and vigor and verdure that have outworn decay.
One hundred and fifty years ago ! The Presby- terian church in this land was then a feeble sapling, with uncertain prospects before it. It numbered about twenty-six ministers, and possibly some forty feeble churches. But there were those among its pastors then that have left behind them memorable names. James Anderson, just settled at New York, of whom the historian Wodrow, correspondent of Colman and the Mathers, speaks as " my old acquaintance,"-Pumroy, of Newtown, Long Island, whose son, in the Great Revival of 1740, was a friend of Whitefield, and a co-laborer with Wheelock and Bellamy,-John Thompson, of Lewes, Delaware, subsequently the leading member
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of what was known as the "Old Side,"-Pierson, of Woodbridge, where he had labored for two years, the third in a line of ministers worthily held in high honor,-Robert Cross, just settled at Newcas- tle, Delaware, but subsequently destined to larger usefulness at Jamaica, Long Island, and Philadel- phia,-William Tennent, the patriarch of Nesham- iny, the father of a ministerial household, who were to make the name famous to after centuries ; and among others, if last not least, " the great Mr. Dickinson," Jonathan Dickinson of Elizabethtown, a man who, by his rare gifts and graces, his learning and wisdom, was facile princeps among his brethren, and who was for his time the leading champion against the claims of a High Church Episcopacy, trusted and honored alike in his own field, in New England and in Scotland.
Into association more or less intimate with such men came Daniel Taylor, the first pastor of the church of Newark Mountains, some four or five years after the church was gathered. To Dickin- son, especially, possessed of a kindred spirit and of the same political sympathies, he must have been strongly drawn. Both men combatted the claims 6
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of the Proprietors, who made nothing of Indian deeds, and asserted rights of property which were accounted unwarranted and oppressive. Each was in more than an ecclesiastical sense the leader of his people, and each was an honored representative of popular rights. Dickinson died October 12, 1747, and Taylor was spared for his work less than three months longer.
If, as has been supposed, the organization of the church of Newark Mountains was helped forward by dissatisfaction with the Presbyterian sympathy or connection of the mother church of Newark, events had already occurred which tended to unite them in kindlier feeling. In 1738, Aaron Burr was settled at Newark, and in the following year his labors were crowned with a powerful revival. Undoubtedly its influence extended to the church of Orange, and all questions of ecclesiastical sym- pathy were overruled by the questions which it excited. The " great work of God," as men like Edwards and Wheelock termed it, had commenced, and it was destined to sweep with irresistible power throughout the bounds of the American churches. Denominational lines were now of but small ac-
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count. The division in the Middle States, as in New England, was between the friends and the opponents of the revival. Then came Gilbert Ten- nent's Nottingham Sermon, and stormy sessions of the Synod, protests and counter protests, till the Old Side and the New Side drew apart in the division of 1741. Then the New Brunswick Pres- bytery became the champion of the new religious movement, and responded to the calls of Con- necticut churches, that favored the revival, to sup- ply their pulpits. Then came the persecuting Connecticut laws of 1742, by which young Finley, subsequently President of the College at Prince- ton, was arrested, and sent as a vagrant beyond the limits of the colony ; laws which forbade David Brainerd to show his face at New Haven for fear of imprisonment ; laws which dogged the steps of many a minister, and virtually silenced him ; laws which sent several of the most devout and fervent pastors of Connecticut out of the colony, to find, within the bounds of the Presbyterian church, a freedom that they could not hope to enjoy under the shadow of a church trammeled by the State .*
At this point the speaker quoted from the "Historical
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In such circumstances, men who might other- wise have lived and died Congregationalists, could remain such no longer. They became exiles from their former homes, that under the Presbyterian system they might enjoy a freedom which could not be allowed them as pastors of Connecticut churches. Into this region they came, and met a hearty welcome. There was no State church here. There were no ecclesiastical laws, made by the civil authority, to interfere with the free discharge of their duties, and they gladly accepted the privi- leges which were offered here by the friends of the
Sketch of Religious Liberty in Connecticut," (His. Magazine, July 1868, pp. 9, 10,) as follows :
"In the diary of David Brainerd, for September 1742, we find that he had preached for the Separatist Church, organized in New Haven in the preceding May, (5th) by Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Cooke, John Graham, and Elisha Kent. For this, he was informed that the civil authorities were seeking an oppor- tunity to arrest and imprison him. He desired to meet his friends at New Haven, but he dared only to venture to the house of an acquaintance at a distance from the town.
Thomas Lewis was a fellow student of Brainerd, graduating at Yale College in 1741. For him, zealous in the cause of the revival, there was no toleration within the bounds of Con- necticut ; and like Davenport, Symmes, Allen and others, New
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revival, and under an ecclesiastical system which secured supervision of the churches without the aid of Governors or sheriffs.
It was thus, that whenever the question of eccle- siastical connection or sympathy was raised, the Congregationalism of Connecticut, leaning on State patronage and support, represented church bond- age; and the Presbyterian system, independent of State aid or supervision, represented at once eccle- siastical liberty and sympathy with the revival.
In such circumstances there could be no question on what side men like Webb and the Brainerds,
Jersey furnished him a refuge, and in 1747 he was settled at Bethlehem in that province.
"He could not complain of the character of those that suffered with him. A few months before, Samuel Finley, subsequently President of Princeton College, was sent by the Presbytery of New Brunswick to supply the churches formed at Milford and New Haven, which had put themselves under their care. For preaching at Milford, he was arrested and sent out of the Government as a vagrant. He returned and preached at New Haven, for which he was seized at the meeting house door, on Lord's day morning, and carried away by an officer. He re- turned again, and preached to the people. This is said to have induced the Legislature to enact that any minister who should do the like, should be imprisoned till he gave a bond in one hundred pounds not to do so again."
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Dickinson, Pierson, and doubtless we may add Taylor of Orange, long before his death, would be found. A wonderful Providence had made ques- tions of mere church order or organization seem of small importance, and a Congregational zealot of that day would have seemed as much out of place here as a swallow in January. It is only at a later period that Jacob Green, of Hanover, perhaps the first man on the continent that called himself an Edwardian, chose to take a position outside the pale of the Presbyterian church, there however to organize a new Presbytery on the voluntary prin- ciple, and assume the privilege, which the Synod denied, of sending others beside liberally educated men to work in the great field, whitening to the harvest. Seventeen years the division of the Old and New Side continued. In 1758 the parted streams mingled once more in a common current. Daniel Taylor had gone to his rest ; and Caleb Smith, a young licentiate, and a theological pupil of Jonathan Dickinson, was called (1748)· to suc- ceed him. For ten years previous to the reunion he was pastor at Orange, and doubtless was in full sympathy with the efforts that brought it about.
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With him a new generation of ministers appears upon the stage. The church at large has rapidly increased. The ministry has multiplied, in forty years, nearly four-fold, and the churches doubtless in like proportion. The missionary spirit of the church has gone forth to new, larger, and more distant fields. Mc Whorter, of Newark, has tra- versed Virginia and the Carolinas on preaching tours. The saintly Brainerd, at the forks of the Delaware, has illustrated the triumphant power of the Gospel over savage nature, and has prayed, and wept, and preached, and worn out his feeble strength, in his apostolic work. Scarcely his infe- rior in devotion, his brother John, stationed for a time at Newark, has traversed the New Jersey Pines, and carried the Gospel to almost every heathen neighborhood. Ere long, Spencer, of Elizabethtown and Trenton, with a mind worthy of a statesman, and a heart large enough to take to its sympathy the largest plans of Christian effort ; Beatty, on whose shoulders fell the mantle of the Patriarch of Neshaminy, and whose pioneer labors extended to the far-off banks of the Ohio ; Duffield, his worthy compeer, resolute, unflinching, daring
4
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to speak the boldest words which a Christian patriot might speak; these, and many more, worthy to be associated with them, appear on the scene, gracing the missionary annals of the church with records of which their honored descendants may well be proud. Nor, at this juncture, should such names be forgotten as those of John Rodgers, the friend of Whitefield, transplanted from the Southern field to New York, where he lived to lay his hand upon the head of one (Dr. Spring) whose long protracted pastorate links the generation of a century ago to ours ; President Davies, the Vir- ginian Apostle, a model of pulpit eloquence, com- manding the admiration of lawyers in the courts where he appeared to plead the rights of Virginia " Dissenters," and extorting applause from the critical hearers of the old world where he urged the claims of sacred learning, and collected the means to endow Princeton College ; the Finleys, combining scholarship with piety, and giving point to the contrast drawn by the great Dr. Mason between the death-bed of the believer and that of the skeptic ; Bostwick, of New York, challenging from the historian Smith a tribute to his eloquence;
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Francis Alison, the most thorough scholar of the day, whose plea for reunion in 1758, recently republished, is inferior in force of argument and fervor of eloquence to no similar production of this recent period ; Samuel Buell, of Easthamp- ton, L. I., a friend of Edwards and Hopkins, whose appeals could melt a listening assembly to tears, and whose wit could disarm even Tory inso- lence. And even with such a list, we must pass over many with whom the second pastor of this church came in contact, and whose features and characters were photographed upon his memory, and treasured in his heart.
But at the early age of thirty-eight he was called away by death; and in 1766, after a vacancy of three or four years, he was succeeded by a man whose name has gone forth far and wide, and whose just fame is limited by no parish bounds. This man was Jedediah Chapman, doubtless a pupil of Dr. Bellamy, and one who was destined in another sphere to lay the foundations of many generations.
The period of his ministry here, extending to the opening of the present century, is eventful in
.
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the history of the church and world at large. It began at the very time when the United Conven- tion of Presbyterians and Congregationalists was formed to counteract the project of leading Episco- palians to impose Bishops on the Colonies, with or without the authority of Parliament. £ It closed when the plan of union between the two denomi- nations, that was intended to harmonize them on the great Mission Field at the West, was about to take effect. It began almost at the same time that the Stamp Act produced a revolutionary ferment throughout the land. It closed when the thrones of Europe were shaking with the echoes of French cannons, and at the tramp of Napoleon's legions. It covered the period of our revolutionary struggle, and of the terrible revolution of France. It was characterized by national convulsions, the inroads of infidelity and error, and the outbreak of the powerful revivals in the South and West.
To events and scenes like these, the pastor of this church could not have been indifferent. Doubtless many a time the attention of his Sabbath audience was divided between his words, and the echo of the enemy's cannon, rolled back from these neighbor-
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ing mountains. Many a time, doubtless, the con- gregation met on one Sabbath, uncertain whether the next should find them gathered beneath the sacred roof, or scattered as fugitives from their desolate or plundered homes. The proximity of the enemy at New York must have been a constant terror. How precious must have been the truth which in such times pointed them to God as their refuge and strength, or directed their trembling faith to the Rock of Ages ! Then indeed the sanctuary was precious to them. Here the prayer of burdened souls, trembling at once for the liberty of the country and the Ark of God, went up to heaven. Here the faithful pastor, loyal to God and his country, inspired hope amid the thickening gloom, by the words of the divine promise. Hunted out himself by special malignity, and forced to flee for his life, with what power must his accents have fallen on the ears of those who knew his danger, and under the sense of what impending risks he spoke !
But another class of events soon claimed his attention. The Presbyterian Church, with the close of the war, was summoned to a survey of the
1
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desolations that had been wrought, and called not only to rebuild the old wastes, but to enter upon new fields. Almost contemporary with the organ- ization of the Federal Government, the General Assembly was constituted, and the Presbyterian Church was equipped, none too early, for a work that would tax all its energies. Population was rolling its vast tide westward. The nuclei of churches were gathering in the wilderness. There was need of experienced and judicious men to shape the social elements of new regions, and after a ministry longer than falls to the lot of most men, Mr. Chapman was summoned by the voice of the Church to remove to a frontier post in the State of New York. Here for twelve years the patriarch toiled on, and the voice that had been heard here amid scenes of peace and scenes of conflict, was to speak the counsels of wisdom to the young min- istry that gathered around him.
The pastor who succeeded Mr. Chapman was so intimately associated with the leading ministers of the church, and important events connected with it, that his life becomes largely a part of its history. He studied theology under Dr. Buell, the friend of
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Edwards, completing his course under Dr. Living- ston, of New York, the first theological professor, and one of the Fathers of the Reformed (Dutch) Church. His attainments, character and position, commanded respect, and the list of his intimate friendships would bring up such names as those of Griffin and Richards, Perrine and Armstrong, and scores of others, some of whom linger yet among us, venerable in usefulness as in years. But Mr. Hillyer came not inexperienced into this field. He had endured hardness as a pioneer missionary. With his own eyes he had looked upon the fields white for the harvest. He had traversed the forests of Central New York, and entered fully into the missionary spirit of the era that opened with the century.
What a change was he spared to witness ! The single Synod of 1786, when he began his ministry at Madison, had grown to a General Assembly with many Synods. The membership of the church had increased from perhaps fifteen or twenty thousand to between two and three hundred thousand. Within ten years after his settlement here, Prince-
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ton Seminary was established, and it had to the end no firmer friend than he. A few years later Auburn was founded. And how his heart must have glowed to hear of the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, Marysville in Tennessee, Allegheny at Pittsburg, Lane at Cincinnati, Union at New York -until whole States, that were a wilderness when he came here, had become the strongholds of the Presbyterian church.
In the grand movement that helped all this for- ward he took a leading part, and he had, moreover, his share of burden and trial. It might seem as if the rage of partisan feeling or prejudice might have spared one as inoffensive and gentle as Hill- yer, but amid the recriminations of that period, when the imputation of sympathy with New Eng- land theology sufficed in some quarters to condemn a man, even Hillyer was marked for reprobation.
It is instructive now, though perhaps not very entertaining, to go back to those days when the now venerable Dr. Spring was accounted a heretic, and only received to the Presbytery in the confi- dence that, if gently dealt with, he would be
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brought to entertain sounder views, or in part by the bold and generous declaration of Dr. Miller, " you may reject that young man, if you see fit, but in condemning him, you will condemn me ;" to those days when the Rev. (Dr.) Ely published his contrast between Calvinism and Hopkinsianism, and Dr. McLeod gave evening lectures to his people to fortify them against the terrible heresy implied in the latter; to those days when the. writer of the " Triangle," lighted up with wit and sprightliness all the obscure inconsistencies that he thought he could detect in ultra Calvinism, and the Young Men's Missionary Society, of New York, was rent in twain on the question of commissioning Rev. (Dr.) Cox, whom the Presbytery of Philadel- phia had counted unsound in the faith. But it is instructive, at least, now that the stormy partizan- ship of the time has passed by, to see how good men misapprehended one another, and to note how on both sides were found names that divide about equally our respect.
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