USA > New York > Onondaga County > Pompey > Addresses delivered at the centennial anniversary of the First Congregrational Church, Pompey, N. Y. June 21st-23rd, 1896 : together with a historical sketch of the church > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
How well I recall some of the clergymen who filled your pulpit in the olden time :- Jabez Chadwick, Eleazer S. Barrows, and my step-grandfather, Joshua Leonard, men of large endowments and holy lives. Of the latter, Judge Charles Mason-Pompey's eminent son-said, in his letter to the Pompey re-union :-
"I have never known a more lucid expositor of an ob-
83
LETTER FROM HON. LUTHER MARSH.
struse subject, or one who would present any idea more clearly with the same number of words. He was the soul of the academy, and gave it most of its well-merited celebrity, and whenever memory calls up that institution from among the shadows of the past, prominent in the foreground is the figure of Mr. Leonard, with his cane and spectacles, and with his erect military bearing."
Whenever the name of this writer-Charles Mason- comes to my mind, I am thrilled with admiration for his great and sterling qualities. How full of noble thoughit, exquisite sentiment and true affection, in the letter re- fered to, to the Pompey re-union! In it he speaks of attending your church in the audience chamber of the old Academy, before your present edifice was erected, and also, of having witnessed the completion of the struc- ture; whereupon the builder performed most daring feats among the lofty spires of the steeple.
When in 1796 your church was organized, Pompey was young. The village was a little cleared spot on the crest of the hill, with what they thought primeval forest, but really second-growth, stretching all around. The moccasin of the Onondaga imprinted the fallen leaves of the woods, and bruin was a frequent visitor. The history of your church is really the history of the town, which was not christened mitil six years before your church began. Indeed it was only seven years before the origin of the church that the first white settler struggled up the wooded steeps and planted his habitation of logs.
There on her wind-swept peak, the village sits, lifting her head 1,743 feet above the tide, and there, amid the
84
POMPEY CENTENNIAL, ADDRESSES.
drifts and cyclones of the winter, and the balmny breezes of the summer-solstice, we faithfully, every Sabbath, wended our way to the Presbyterian sanctuary.
I have often thought that the inspiring ozone of the mount, inhaled through my first dozen years, was what has carried me through many arduous labors, into my eighty-fourth year, free from all disease and with con- stitution unimpaired.
A hundred years ! One-fourth of the period since Col- umbus came; less than one-twentieth of the time since Deity incarnated, dawned on the world. In these hun- dred years many saintly ones in the catalogue of your church have arisen from this earth-life, to the beati- tudes of a higher sphere.
May your influence continue through many centuries to come, in pointing the way to celestial life.
Yours Verily,
LUTHER R. MARSH.
The Continuity of Life and Influence.
BY THE REV. HIRAM C. HAYDN, D. D.
This is the message that comes to you and to me, to this generation as to the first. One soweth and another reapeth. Others have labored and ye are entered into their labors.
We may at first blush, be a little dissatisfied that our partnership with others should be so close and interlock- ed, and since reaping is the cap-sheaf of life, to be ap- pointed to reap the sowing of others and not our own.
There may also seem, at first thought, to be a contra- diction of the saying of an Apostle, "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." But the reference here is not to the same thing. The Apostle is speaking of personal character, of the habits of men and the use they make of their opportunities as affecting themselves. He tells them that they cannot get away from themselves, and an abused self-hood will avenge itself on itself; and an honored self-hood will bring to itself the supreme sat- isfaction of life.
But Christ is speaking of the wider relations of a man to his fellows and to the world he lives in, to the way in which fathers prepare the way of their children and they in turn influence them that come after, to the way in
86
POMPEY CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES.
which our generation of men steps into the work of former generations, and leaves to another its own unfin- ished plans.
As concerns individual character this day's living re- ports itself immediately. To-day's debauch writes its story to-day on nerve and tissue and tendency. Out in the wide world, field, building of a nation, a city, a church, evangelizing a land, our generation may spend itself in obscurity, successive generations may seem to be moving at a snail's pace toward the distant goal, and would ab- sol itely have lived in vain but for that continuity of life influence which sets our generation in the steps of the receding, and allows no break. A great principle is touched here, old as time and broad as the world, which it is of great consequence to get hold of,-of utmost in- terest as well.
See the foreshadowings of this weighty matter in the building work of a world as outlined in Genesis. Out of Chaos to build a universe and whatever may be true of other worlds, to get one ready for the divine-imaged mail to act his part on one, two, three, four, five great stages of preparation, each running through vast periods of time. Two built upon one, three built upon one and two, five on all the four preceding. All five needful to make a dwelling place for the man who is coming. One alone sows and another reaps, also sows for the next to reap. The principle of succession holds, even though a man interprets the six days, as of twenty-four hours each.
But see how human history evolves after the same fashion. Suppose that with the departure of each gener-
87
CONTINUITY OF LIFE AND INFLUENCE.
ation the desks were cleared of their work and of the records of their experience, for a new one to begin its work. They shall not enter into the labors of their an- cestors. They shall do their own work and live their own life, detached from all that went before and is to fol- low. There could then be no history, no progress. His- tory and progress are possible because each succeeding generation is heir to all that has gone before.
Hebrew history begins with Abram-but Abram does not leave Ur of the Chaldees empty-handed, empty-headed. He has a great fund of experience to draw upon. The libraries of this book and priestly city of Ur contain the gathered wisdom of the past. The voice that comes to him from God and the urging that is upon him come thro the traditions of a still more primitive age and people. They have a hand in the making of this man Abram, soon to be styled friend of God, and prince among men, father of the faithful through teeming centuries. In character reaping as he went the harvest of his sowing, as Paul says-as related to the Hebrew people, and the purpose of God that to him should all the families of the earth be blessed, sowing for others to reap, as he was privi- leged to reap the wisdom of centuries before hint.
We speak of the glory of the age of Solomon-but without a David there had been no Solomon. The glory of the Solomonic age is shot through with the glory of the Davidic. David getting ready the innaterial of the temple for Solomon to build it, is typical of what is go- ing on everywhere. David sowed stones and cedar trees , gold and silver, conquests of enemies round about
88
POMPEY CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES.
through bloody wars, amicable relations with great pow- ers to the north of him, that Solomon might reap peace and wealth for the tribute of the conquered, and build the temple, and palaces, and ships to go here and there, and come again to Ezion-giber, and pursue the studies congenial to himself. Meanwhile himself sowing the seeds of discord and corruption of the faith and mesalli- ance with alien blood, for his son and the people of Israel to reap in a dismembered kingdom. And even David is only the culmination of a series, and his work is possible because of Saul and Samuel and Moses. They are all here in that august hour, when the finished temple is filled with the glory of Jehovah, the proudest moment of Solo- mon's life. And there is not a church called by the name of the Christ, nor a mosque from whose minaret tower is- sues the call to prayer in Allah's name, that is not linked with this same temple where for the first time Jehovah's name was associated with structures of wood and stone. Any one can see that the Victorian era of English history whose marvelous strides have no parallel elsewhere, and which throws into shadow, by its exceeding brightness, all that went before, through a thousand years, is the harvest-time of the sowing of all that long travail of gen- eration following generation, whose resultant is the English nation of to-day. This little island has all been fought over. Norman, Dane, Celt and Saxon have all had a hand in its making. Feudal castles everywhere tell of a stage in their building process, once vital, long since passed away. The civil and religious liberty of this day is the price of martyr blood that flowed like
89
CONTINUITY OF LIFE AND INFLUENCE.
water. This throne and sceptre for half a century so honored, what a succession trends away back into the past-go to Westminster Abbey and see. Great cathed- rals all over England tell of a religious cult no longer ex- tinct but represented in the church of England whose child she is.
Not to enlarge all through, it is our generation, our reign, sowing and another reaping, the last gathering up all the best of all that went before, and sowing the world with the ample resources, the gathered wisdom, the open bibles, the civil rights, the sense of justice, the civiliza- tion of the most wondrous era of the world, thus far.
To come closer home no one will pretend that our Pil- grim fathers reaped what they sowed from 1620 on. Nor did they of the colonial period. Through the slow nov- ing century and a half to the moral Independence, they avowed their unselfish purpose to spend themselves for posterity. They were happy in the thought that others would enter into their labors. They gloried in the vision of a ripened harvest, which only whitened to their faith. Their sentiments were voiced by the nation's leaders all through the period of the revolution and echoed back from the firesides where sacrifice left its scars and wrote its heroic annals. They had, indeed, reaped a harvest from the sowing of the seed of the kingdom in martyr-blood harrowed into the soil of their lives by persecution. They gathered of the precious grain in the full belief, that to sit down and munch it all in selfishness, was to rob the world and impoverish the generation that was to be. No harvest
90
POMPEY CENTENNIAL, ADDRESSES.
is ever gathered that is not meant, in part, to be the mother of harvests yet to be. Every reaper must be a sower, or rob the world of a harvest that is its due. They had no quarrel with the plans of God and the ordering of His world. They had reaped the harvest of a costly sowing, they would sow the seed of one no less precious for their children to reap. So it came to pass that the expatriated of the old world became the founders of the new. And the colonies grew into the na- tion. And the nation struggled on, through conflict of opinion and strife of words and clash of arms till the years of a century are numbered; but the whole hun- dred are ground into the last-the winnowed wheat, the residuum that came out of the fire untouched, and some- what of the evil that always goes with the good, the har- vesting of the latest born.
This is the way the church has grown from one hun_ dred and twenty in an upper chamber in old Jerusalem, -- a church not yet out of the broken shell of Judaism, into a wide-world faith. Its a broken shell, this Judaism. It cannot hold for long the imprisoned life. This church inherits much from the past. It owes much to the fu- ture. How much do I owe the future? All I have got out of the past, with interest. This church of the first generation must sow that the next may live and reap and sow again. This is life's process everywhere. Cen- turies of religious stagnation lie between us and the Apostolic age, because this principle was not duly hon- ored-content to harvest, and not sow that others might also reap. Their selfishness avenged itself in degenerate
91
CONTINUITY OF LIFE AND INFLUENCE.
life. We reap to live, but we sow to make it worth while to live, and to make possible a better and a brighter future for the world. But for this law obeyed, the church had never gotten out of Jerusalem. The begin- ning had been the end. Nobody that plucks the fruit from this tree of life but is bound to sow the seeds that other men may live. There is not a continent nor an island of the sea nor a tribe or people made Christian except as this law of life has been lionored. Because it has never been allowed to drop out of sight, the christen- dom of this closing decade of the nineteenth century is seen to be linked with Pentecost, and the church which persecution scattered abroad. What is this christendom of to-day ? What that was, is told in a few paragraphs in the Acts. No most gifted pen can fully outline this and not write a volume. It sweeps all climes, all conti- nents, all seas, all races of men. One in three of all the world's population professes, in some sort, to own the name of Christ. The great civilizing forces of the age, the least that holds in check the mightiest armies of his- tory. The word of command that controls the fleets that sail all seas, rest with Christian powers. They prac- tically dominate all lands and peoples.
What is behind it all? What has made this century so essentially different from the first ? It is obedience to the command of our Lord Christ-"Go teach all nations. When one falls let another take his place, sow the seed of the kingdom, which is the word of God. Harvest will follow." They went, they scattered themselves, these of the loyal legion, over Europe, Africa, America, the is-
92
POMPEY CENTENNIAL, ADDRESSES.
lands of the sea, one generation sowing and another reap- ing, and so on and on. That is how it came to pass that there is a Europe, an England, a United States of America, a Pompey and a first Presbyterian church in it. And yet, some people do not believe in missions.
And now that I have, at last, got to Pompey, it is scarcely necessary to do more than to remind you of its history, to have you see that we have come to this hour, generation following generation, working along this line. In no manner else could we have got here. This gener- ation cannot say "What you see about you is all our work." The pioneer and the men who followed at their heels, on the farm and in the village, in school, academy and church cannot say it. Least of all can the new and alien element which has come in and taken pos- session of farm and highway claim the present as their work. They have simply entered into the work of men and women whose sandals they are not worthy to unloose. Men of my years who call up the sit- uation of their boyhood in this place, the men and women who filled these pews; the long procession of vehicles of every sort seating from 2 to 12-they had families in those days-coming up the many streets that centre on the open common in front of this church, filing in to sheds behind, or passing on up to the Metho- dist or Disciples' church-the Jeromes, the Woodfords, the Northrups, Wells and Van Brocklins, the Haydens, the Cooks and Clapps, the Beards and Hiscocks and the families that filed in from the village: the Birdseye's, Wheatons, Gotts, Bakers, Wells, Dooletts and so 011,
93
CONTINUITY OF LIFE AND INFLUENCE.
can but be deeply impressed with the changed situation. That was an imposing assembly that gathered here and filled the floor and the galleries as far back as the fifties. Pompey meant something in those days. Those men went directly from this village to congress, when it meant something to go to congress, and many, very many more, by various paths found their way to eminence and useful- ness. It was inevitable as fate that a change should come over the situation. For half the century in review Syra- cuse was scarcely of more consequence than Pompey, and for long held no such coign of vantage. But when the whistle of the steam engine followed upon the tread of the slow-paced horse along the towpath down in the val- ley yonder, the doom of this village, as a commercial and intellectual centre, was sealed. There was no help for it. The transition began when the next generation began to cast about for the best place to put in their lives. The innnense changes incident upon . the Civil war and the opening up of the country by railroad and telegraph to the far Pacific slopes, made the road to fortune easy on the new lands, the new cities and among the treasures of the everlasting hills of the mountain states and territories. This is how it has come to pass that Pompey's sons are scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific sea-board. Pompey has been drained of her wealth of sons, but the land of the world is the richer for them. We must get what comfort we can out of that, and summon our forti- tude to content ourselves, while an alien race and faith come in to take the empty places. Still the air is as pure, the hills as green, the distant prospect no less lovely, and
94
POMPEY CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES.
from the valley yonder the people often look longingly to these breezy hill-tops. Again, the virtues of the pioneer may assert themselves-I wish I could be sure that they would-in the descendants of ancient families, in the face of every discouragement, to see to it that faith and cour- age and enterprise do not die out. The spirit of the pio- neer is again called for. History is yet to be made on this hill. It will not be a repetition of the past, but it inay be worthy. Protestantisin centres here in this church of a hundred years, and it ought to be broad enough, liberal enough, to make the varied shades of evangelical belief at home here and keep it strong and aggressive. And from this centre, as of old, should the 1100ks and corners, 2 and 3 miles away, feel the kindly touch of a living faith and the warmth of the mind and heart of the Master. So might the fires on these altars long be kept burning.
No man may forecast what is coming in the next cen- tury, when the ending of this is so marvelous. But of this we may be sure-God has not left the world to spin on without Him. And of this also be sure-our busi- ness is to mind our own business, and do our business in our day, so that they who come after may find their busi- ness the easier got at and do it the more worthily because of our fidelity to our trust.
Looking the whole field over first and last, boasting is excluded, because no generation can say of its doings- "This is exclusively mine-it has no roots in the past, and partnership with others, there is none." Of what can this be said ? Every sane man sees that for what he
95
COTINUITY OF LIFE AND INFLUENCE.
is, must be recognized in some degree, often in great de- gree. the character of the family tree of which he is a branen, and what was done for him in the cradle and thence forward. And then, beginning to work, no mat- ter where or on what, he could make no absolutely new start. Who a builder in church or state, in schools of learning or avenues of trade, does not know and gladly recognize his indebtedness to the past ? And but for that past, his work must have been quite other than it is. Fix your eyes on this church established here in the days of the early settlers of this county, and tell me, who is so conceited as not to own to himself-"I have a mission because my forerunners made history in their day. Had they not sown, my harvest had been thin." Let me not be high minded, but humble. Second-so far from paralyzing effort, herein lies its great incentive. True, I cannot separate and view apart the fruit of my own effort; it goes into the common stock of effort that is building up the church, the school, the community, but nothing so surely conserves all worthy effort as institu- tions which are to live on in some form or other. The form may change, but the thing, in its essence, abides. A little pulley is a small affair in the great network of machinery, but without it there would be friction. A boy is a small force among a hundred men, but the boy may be essential to the best use of the hundred. And boy and pulley tell for far more because of their partner- ship with others in a great work, than could they, worked apart from all such co-operation. We are often concerned about our little doing. It seems insignificant, and even
96
POMPEY CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES.
so, we cannot gather it up. We think of them who pass away in an untimely hour as it seems to us-they were not permitted to reap the harvest of their sowing. They saw not the land of promise toward which they toiled, but it was worth while for Moses to bring the children of Israel out of bondage and to the border of the promised land, though he, himself, might not enter. He was work- ing on a very broad plan, which he could not begin to comprehend, and his part was vital to its fulfillment. It was worth while for David to gather up the material for the temple whose walls and golden spires he might not see. But David went into the temple, and essentially David and Moses went into Canaan. And they both walk the earth wherever the living oracles are taken abroad, and the sweet songs of Israel are sung, and the ten great words are said. So the fathers are with us, and the mothers in our Israel, the young men and maidens, and the stalwart in their prime, all they who, first and last, have sat within these walls and wrought here for Christ. O yes a great. cloud of witnesses-their work and our work knitted into the same web-one and entire unto this day. When we see truly we shall understand that this is the true glory of life; that, so far from being set apart to a little task, all by ourselves, to write our name upon when done, we are taken into a great, glorious, divine fel- lowship, upon a building of God whose topmost stone shall be brought forth with rejoicing and sowers and reapers shall be glad together, in our hallelujah shout of Glory to God in the highest. No worker, ever so humble, nor honest effort though weak, will fail of being gathered
.
97
CONTINUITY OF LIFE AND INFLUENCE.
into the structured kingdom, upon which the saints of all the ages have wrought.
Third, rightly viewed, as we see, our work thus goes on when our visible preserver is no more a part of it. In- deed, the best of it may issue in result after we are gone. It could not be if everything had stopped when the fath- ers went, or were to stop when we retire. To the super- ficial view, men never seem of so little consequence, as when we see how, their bier having passed by, the great tide of affairs moves right on unresting; a moment men pause and look up "Gone" and settle down to their work till their turn comes. Nobody seems essential to anything. We thought everything rested on the shoulders of such an one. And lo! there is no collapse, nor scarce a tremor, 110W that those shoulders are withdrawn. It is well that the affairs of the world do not stop when, to human view, we stop. But we don't stop. The men who have shepherded this flock in days gone by still wield their crook over it. Livingstone is more alive today than when wan and in rags he knelt to die in the thatched house of Illala. We make our stand upon such as he that we may learn to see that this is true of all genuine life. Asa Wells, Victory Birdsey, Daniel Gott, Samuel Baker, Truman K. Wright are just as much alive to me as when they sat down there in the pews, listeners to inspire a preacher. To me these aisles are full of men who will never die. They make sound the work to which you of this day put your hand, the steps into which you put your feet. Beware ye who enter into tlie labors of such as these that in no mean way ye enter. Fourth, First in the family and next in the
98
POMPEY CENTENNIAL, ADDRESSES.
church this principle of continuity and partnership in int- erest holds with supreme force.
How many of us must say, if we speak truly, "Our parents, our grandparents labored, and we have entered into their labors. Our inheritance from them has made us what we are. These things that stand in my name do not represent my industry and economy. -- " I am one who entered into a door that another hand set ajar, and here I am." True, wherefore art thou there? It takes a deal of sense to enter into the labors of others. Our own la- bors, if we have any, we know the cost of -- we know not the cost of others' labors. What do we know of the cost of pioneer life? But for pioneer life, where were we? Try to know the cost of your inheritance from the past that you may know how to carry yourself therein. For some seem to have no sense of privilege and responsibility in the labors of others into which they enter. They shut the door quick behind the retreating form and set theni- selves down in the midst of the toils and economies of past generations, as a grub burrows in a nut till the meat is all gone, and is a grub still.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.