USA > New York > Albany County > Albany > Albany bi-centennial. Historical memoirs > Part 11
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abstained from the exercise of his ministry and to have devoted himself to the care of the estate, which devolved upon him by the death of the patroon. So far as our ecclesiastical history in Albany is concerned, it is only an episode that led to no rooting and no results.
Looking toward the real beginning of the church in Al- bany, I find the first definite proposal made in 1695, by the Rev. John Miller, who was for three years chaplain of the fort in New York. And it is made in a right churchly way. Lamenting the divisions amongst Christians and bewailing the lack of clergymen to minister to the English settlers, he proposes, in a letter to the bishop of London, the appoint- ment of a " Bishop to reside in New York with a staff of well-learned clergymen whom he could send into the towns of the province, and form, as opportunity presented, parishes of the Church of England, or at least give the members of the church regular services." He also asks in particular for the appointment of a chaplain to the soldiers in Albany. Earlier by seventy years than the petition of the Connecticut clergy, this suggestion of the true method of planting the church in America, upon the old plan of the Bishop and his cathedral staff making a strong church centre, is satisfactory and sug- gestive in the spirit that prompted it. What vantage ground it would have given the Church, if it could have been carried out, is impossible to overstate. But it went over until the days of William and Mary, and then the wretched substitute of a commissary of the Bishop of London took its place, and in spite of Inglis in New York and Bray in Maryland, and of the "ministry act," which established the Church in America, little was done beside the securing of a few grants, the planting of scattered parishes and the distribution of prayer books and tracts. One good reactive benefit ought to be mentioned here. The Church of England owes the existence of its glorious Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to Dr. Bray's representation of the needs of America. The first actual beginning of services here was by the Rev. Thoroughgood Moore, who came in 1704 as missionary to the Mohawk Indians, and held services on the very spot where we are now gathered, which then was Fort Frederick. Curiously interturned are the threads which go to make up the story of motives, hindrances and results in connection with this beginning. The line of posts established by the French, from the Niagara river to the
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Mohawk, and the energy of the Jesuit missionaries, combin- ing as they did always, the interests of the Church and the State, of the Cross and the crown of France, threatened col- lision between the two nations of France and England, and the great interest of the fur traders required that the English trading posts should be undisturbed. Added to this came the impression made upon Queen Anne, especially by Bel- lamore and Cornbury, as to the great importance of main- taining the friendly alliance which the Dutch had begun with the five Indian tribes, and in order to do this of making the Indians Christians. Albany was the central point, to which a yearly conference of the chiefs of the five-nations was called, and where the attempt was made to impress them with the majesty of the British crown; and here the first missionary was sent, to make this the basis of operations for mission work among the two tribes-the Mohawks and the Onondagas. But, alas! the influences of counteraction were too strong. Mr. Moore made several attempts to reach the Mohawks, but failed, owing to the religious jealousies of the French, and owing to the great unwillingness of the fur traders to allow their nefarious operations to be interfered with. To make the Indians sober would have interfered with the sale of spirits, and to educate them too far would make them wise enough to see the folly of the bargains they were driving in the exchange of skins and furs for beads and trinkets. Finding it impossible to get access to the Mo- hawks, Mr. Moore "left Albany and the Indians in 1705 without any thought of returning." This suspension of the services, which the English had " impatiently desired," was brief; and the next step is the firm planting of the Church to stay. The incorporation here under the name of "the Rector and inhabitants of Albany in communion with the Church of England as by law established," and the coming of the Rev. Thomas Barclay, as chaplain to the fort, in 1708, began the full occupation of the ground. Mr. Bar- clay preached in English and Dutch, and ministered for a time to the Indians in Schenectady. And after some years of worship in a small Lutheran chapel, the English church was built in 1716 by a gift from the city and by subscrip- tions from the garrison, and from Schenectady and other parts of the province.
The beauty and poetry of things are always far more in their beginnings than in their ends. The spring just burst-
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ing through the leaves and stones of its birthplace, and the full rush of the brook in its earliest starting from the spring, are redolent with beauty and resonant with song. As it goes on and widens into smooth water the banks are tame and the flow more sluggish; though all the while it is far richer with the wealth of commerce and the blessing of refreshment to the world. And so it is in the story of almost all growth. The picturesque and the romantic are at the first. What follows, naturally, of our growth, is far richer in results, but tamer in the telling. In 1737 the first native- born clergyman, a son of the Rev. Thomas Barclay, was Rector of St. Peter's church for eight years, and went from here to be Rector of Trinity church, New York. Barclay, Miln, Beasley, Berclay, Ogilvie, Thomas Brown, Harry Monro, these were the succession down to 1769, when the charter was granted to St. Peter's church. Then came the Revolution with all its suspicions and disasters. And in 1787 the Rev. Thomas Ellison became rector, and under him the second building was erected on this present site in 1802. Mr. Ellison died in that year after a ministry of much use- fulness. He was a prominent figure in the Albany of that day; the teacher of Bishop Philander Chase and of Feni- more Cooper, and a great favorite in society. Beasley, Dows, Lacey, these bring the names down to our present memories, and end the period during which the history of St. Peter's church was the history of our Church in Albany. During Dr. Lacey's rectorship the parish of St. Paul's was organized in 1827. And during the rectorship of Bishop Potter, which extended from 1833 to 1854, the parishes of Trinity, Grace and Holy Innocents were organized. Upon Dr. Potter's election to the episcopate, Dr. Pitkin became the Rector, and under his administration the present build- ing, except the completed tower, was built. Then came Mr. Wilson (with Mr. Tatlock as his associate), whom I suc- ceeded, and after me Dr. Snively and Dr. Battershall. The men who have filled the rectorship for the last fifty-three years are all living. Until the incorporation of the Cathe- dral in 1873, no distinct organization of our Church had been undertaken here since 1850, although St. Paul's main- tained its mission for several years in the lower part of the city, now given over to the care of Trinity church. There have been sixteen rectors of St. Peter's in the 178 years of its existence ; seven at St. Paul's in its sixty years; five of
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Trinity in its forty-seven years ; nine of Grace in its forty years ; and six of Holy Innocents in its thirty-six years. I find the first data on which to base our growth in Albany in the Rev. Mr. Monro's report of forty-four communicants and one hundred and fifty attendants, about 1770. In 1791 Mr. Ellison, to whom the Church was deeply indebted for wise and energetic administration, presented to Bishop Pro- voost to be confirmed, in St. Peter's church, one hundred and thirty-six white and eleven colored persons. It would be a more satisfactory comparison if I knew the difference in the population of Albany then and now. But at least it is a matter of thankfulness to realize that to-day the forty- four communicants have become twenty-five hundred, the one Parish five Parishes and the Cathedral; and that their activities are recognized in all good works and ways through- out the city.
The details of this story must be completed by the facts of the branching out of from the old parish of its flourishing scions. Of these, the oldest, St. Paul's, kept its semi-cen- tennial nine years ago, when a goodly number of clergy, in- cluding four of its former Rectors (two of them now Bishops), kept the festival, and the steps of its material and spiritual growth were traced from its cradle in the South Pearl street school room, through the present St. John's Roman Catho- lic church and the old South Pearl street theatre to its pres- ent building, consecrated in 1864. Since then have come the rectory and the admirable building for the Sunday school, whose strong life is one of the marked features of this vigorous Parish.
Twelve years later came Trinity, in 1839, the story of whose growth gathers in very great degree about the life of the Rev. Mr. Selkirk, its first Rector. Prompted by the removal of St. Paul's from the southern part of the city, a few churchmen began the organization of a new Parish. The first building being outgrown by the congregation, was sold, and the present church, admirably situated for an important missionary work, was finished and conse- crated in 1849. In 1868 the parish property was made com- plete by the rectory building, due, as was the church building, in large degree, to Mr. Selkirk's indefatigable ear- nestness. And its story, under its present rector, is what it has been all its life, the story of a patient and faithful strug- gle, to minister to the people of its neighborhood against great odds of poverty.
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Grace church was founded in 1846, and was cared for in early infancy by the priest who bears the old and honorable name of the first patroon, and the first English clergyman in Albany. Beginning with the principle of free seats, which I am glad to say it has always maintained, it was known at first as " the free Episcopal church," and inaugurated in Albany, twenty-five years ago, the music of a boy's choir. From its first building, in 1847, on Washington avenue, it crossed over, building and all, to Clinton avenue, in 1873; where, enlarged and greatly improved, it is doing noble service, in the western portion of the city.
The northern part of Albany was uncared for until 1850. Then Mr. De Witt, a member of St. Paul's church, built the Church of the Holy Innocents, as a memorial to his four children, whom the Lord had given and taken away. To the gift of the church building, he added by will a partial endowment ; and in 1885, after the death of Mrs. De Witt, the Sunday school chapel was deeded to the corporation. It has since been enlarged and improved, and so made bet- ter able to do the hard and important work of caring for the large, changing and varying population of North Albany.
In 1869 the setting off of the old northern convocation into a Diocese was completed by the election of the first Bishop. Of course, this involved the outworking of the Episcopal idea, which is that of a strong centre, from which the oversight and care of all the churches reaches out. The founding of St. Agnes' school in 1871 necessitated some provision for the worship and religious training of its pupils, and this naturally took the form of the Bishop's church. This led to the incorporation, in 1873, of the Cathedral of All Saints, whose congregation, still worshipping in the old foundry where they began, and which has been once en- larged, are slowly advancing toward the completion, for use, of a seemly and suitable cathedral church. It is not too much to say that in its institutions of school and hospital and sisterhood, in its introduction of the cathedral service, adopted now by two other churches in Albany ; in its stim- ulus to the older parishes of the city, and in its own religious work, it is fulfilling the promise which they have the right to expect who do the Lord's work in the Lord's way, and believe in the power of the Bishop's office to strengthen and extend the Church.
The train of thoughts to which such memories lead, strikes
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into the three distinct and separate paths, and the first is the upward way of gratitude to God, who has given us what we might almost call a Christian birth, and blessed and favored with His presence and His grace, the outgrowth from it. The men that made our State held firmly to the fear of God, and had an essential and inherent reverence and respect for the religion of Jesus Christ. French, Dutch, English, in whatever else they differed, were agreed in this, and it is among the earliest records of the time, that they desired, established and sustained the ministrations of our holy reli- gion. It is the fashion of to-day to look with almost con- temptuous disdain upon the narrowness and bitterness of Puritan, Calvinistic and prelatical beliefs. Where they were narrow, they needed broadening into tolerance ; when they were bitter, they needed sweetening, like the waters of Marah, with the tree of the sweetness of the love of Jesus crucified. But we may never lose sight of the sturdy and steadfast belief of our forefathers, which entered so largely into their endurance, their manhood and their virtues. We may never forget that their hearthstones were altars of family prayer ; that the Bible was to them the very Word of grace and truth; and the Book enthroned and enshrined as the voice of God. The Lord's day, even if it were soured and shadowed with Sabbatarianism, was remembered and kept holy. Yes, and we may remember, too, that the Christmas, Easter, Ascension and Whitsunday feasts, alike in Dutch and English hearts, kept alive in those earlier days the great facts of the life of our dear Lord.
We have learned, as the world has grown in the truest Christian thoughts of truth and worship, that no good comes of the attempt to mingle things that will not mingle, the varying views of church polity ; and still less of any effort to force men, by repression and compulsion, into an external oneness of order and form. No English priest to-day would seek to solve the problem of " unhappy divisions," by asso- ciation with the pastor of a Dutch congregation, and no Dutch classis to-day would deny the orders of an English priest, or forbid a Lutheran congregation to worship as they will. But the tenacity of truth is better, was better for foun- dations than vagueness of belief or denial of Christianity ; and from the rugged roots that held firmly in the deep soil of true religious reverence have grown the stately trees, fra- grant and fruitful of " faith and hope and charity." We can,
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with one accord, do honor to-day to the names of Father Jogues, and Labatie and Couture ; of Megalopensis, or Schaets and the Van Rensselaers and Stuyvesants ; of Fab- ricius and Arencius; of our own Van Rensselaer, and Moore, and Barclay, and Lovelace, and Heathcote, and Andros, and Hunter.
It is fit to say a word here of the mutual relation between the church and the city; in the abstract statement of mutual duties and in the estimate of their influence upon each other. The theory upon which all three of the dominant religious bodies began their existence was the theory of an established church. Inconsistent with the future development of the republic, it was wisely and necessarily laid aside. But there was never lost or laid aside, thank God, that which came to us in " the strain " of our blood, the great ideal of a Chris- tian state ; that same ideal which, in its own method of de- velopment has, far more than arms and ships, made England the great nation of the world. That it works ill when either of the two elements become disproportionate is true, and is no argument against their value in due combination. Pro- portion is the root element of beauty and of usefulness. That Constantine's conversion led more to secularizing the church than to Christianizing the empire; that the Bishop of Rome, in the judgment of some, has at least one crown too many (not stopping to say that he were better with only a mitre and no crown at all); that secular and civil penalties ought not to enter into ecclesiastical discipline ; that sword and keys are at cross purposes, and ought not to be crossed; that the misappropriation of religious benefices to be the reward of royal favor or to minister to the indulgence of the unholy loves of kings; that the English establishment, won- derfully as it works for good in our Motherland, is far more beneficial to the State than to the Church of England; all these are true. And yet it is not too much to say, and with the frightful example of the French republic before us, it is to be insisted on, that no State can prosper without the recognition of the Church, and no Church can do its blessed work without the protection of the State; that every king- dom must somewhat reflect the image of the Kingdom of God ; that " righteousness exalteth a nation," and that "sin is a reproach to any people." It is a low thought that men take of a city who make its chief function to be the ministry of sewerage and gas. And is a narrow thought of Chris-
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tianity which does not recognize its influence as foremost to cleanse and to enlighten that in which it is.
I believe, then, that we are to learn from the story of our past, and from the inherent purpose and evident power of the mutual relation between the civil and ecclesiastical bodies of our land, the value that each has for the other. The State has need in every way to encourage religion. The penny-wisdom of the attempt to tax church property is as unwise as the injustice of taxing the property of individuals to support a system of religion to which they are opposed. The very purposes for which money is raised by taxation are the purposes for which, in a large degree, the Christian church is in the world. The police system, which punishes disorder, is not so valuable an element in society as the sys- tem of religious discipline which promotes the order of obe- dience to law. The divine commission, which sent into all the world teachers of perfect truth and pure morality, is the older sister, on a higher plane of usefulness and value, of our system of popular and universal education. And in all ways the influence and power of Christianity in the world make for good citizenship. Piety and patriotism are hand in hand ; and the true lover of his earthly city and his earthly country is the man whose " citizenship is in heaven" and who "seeks another country that is a heavenly." Asking, in no sense, support and utterly refusing any discrimination in favor of one above another Christian body, the Church asks of the State protection ; immunity from attack; rightful influence in inculcating principles, and respect for the great principles that she inculcates ; laws that will keep quiet and free from noise and toil the Lord's Holy day ; the maintenance of the great fundamental and primeval truth of the sanctity, the indissolubility and the exclusiveness of marriage; license laws that shall minimize intemperance ; police powers that shall check impurity ; and such Acts as are needful to preserve ecclesiastical rights, by incorporations from the legislature and decisions in the courts of law. These are at least among the duties which the State owes to the Church.
And for these in turn Christianity proposes to reach her hand in blessings over the State that shields her with its pro- tecting arm. " First of all," St. Paul says, "I will that prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for all that are in authority." That great summary of Christian duty, which the apostle makes, whose
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opening and ending seem to apply it alike to the sovereignty of the people and to the sovereign of the people, runs through the domain of the duties of reverence and charity, and reads, "Honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king." As an institution, the Christian Church in a city and a land like ours, will find its only and important field of service in inculcating the great principles of Chris- tian morality, which bring Heaven down to earth. She will uphold the magistrates by prayer and influence and example. She will point to the coinage of all earthly money and insist that it be rendered unto Cæsar, alike in honest payment of taxes, and in liberal use of it for the health, the adornment and the advantage of the city. She will turn the hospitals and prisons, where bodies are cared for and where crime is punished, into places of spiritual refreshment and moral re- form. She will train up her children in such habits of obe- dience as will make them fit to fill places of authority. She will furnish chaplains for the public institutions and offer the blessing of her prevailing prayer in public places and on public days. She will add one star at least to the flag, and cross the stripes with a perpendicular bar; that so the light of the manifested love of God in Christ may illuminate, and the blood of the redemption that bought all mankind from slavery may consecrate, the " Banner of the stars." She will deepen the blue with a truer charity ; she will incarnadine the red with the Blood of our salvation; she will make the white whiter with the purity of truth; and Christian men and women will set themselves to be good citizens, obedient to the law, respecters of "the powers that be, which are or- dained of God ;" advancers of the things that are " true and pure and lovely and of good report." What do we need so much to-day as some infusion of Christianity into citizenship -not in the way in which unprincipled politicians play into the hands of more unprincipled churchmen, for party ends and sectarian advantage ? That is a danger of to-day to be resisted and condemned. An honestly, openly above-board church establishment, whether in Rome or England, is one thing. Let the Pope be king there, if the people will, and the crown appoint the Bishops, while the law so runs; but the intrusion into politics of religious bodies, and the pan- dering to religious bodies by politicians, is a great danger and a great dishonor to the principles of the Republic. Far otherwise is the intelligent, Christian application to the ad-
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ministration of government and the selection of governors, of the principles of sound religion and pure morals. The duty of Christian men to civil institutions is to enforce, main- tain and honor law and the magistrates-the one as the voice and the other as the representative of God. Well would it be for us who are enjoying to-day the protection and privileges which the Christian fathers and founders of the city have provided for us, if we set ourselves to advance the highest honor that crowns any city ; its growth, not in material wealth and splendid buildings and breathing places for the poor ; not in these only, but far more in the richness of citizens with honorable character ; in upbuilding into the dignities of order and morality ; and in the pure atmosphere of restrained freedom, of even-handed justice, of large and holy liberty, of purity and virtue and simplicity and truth.
The world, in all its centuries, has gathered all that is most glorious in its history, about its cities. It is a curious fact that they had their beginning in sin. Cain was the first builder of a city, and after him came the builders of the plains of Shinar. But the flood destroyed the one, and God came down and turned the other to such confusion as has made Babel ever since the synonym for disorder and strife. The first record of favored cities is in the appointment, by God's command, of cities for the Levites and cities of refuge, in the plains of Moab by Jordan, near Jericho. From that time cities have played a most important part in the history of the world. Stronger, I think, than any other hold, save that of home and country, upon the love and pride of men, is the position that cities occupy. The county and the state are in a great degree abstractions. The country, the Fatherland, is that which gathers and holds our affections. Next comes the city, and most naturally ; as the place where home is, the place of neighborhood and friendship and of life's dearest ties. It is well to think, therefore, with all honor of that which we commemorate to-day-the elevating by colonial and royal recognition of what had been an asso- ciation of people and an aggregation of houses, to the dignity of chartered existence under the ducal name of Albany.
We have no need and no desire to make ourselves ridicu- lous by exaggerated claims and pretensions to age and honor. Two hundred years, however long to us, is little as a meas- ure of antiquity, and many a city of our land is greater and grander than ours. But we may well say on many grounds
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