USA > New York > Albany County > Albany > Albany bi-centennial. Historical memoirs > Part 14
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We are proud of the State Street church. Its history is brief; but its future shall be great. This is a family reunion to-night. We may speak with a degree of freedom. "The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad." Of the men connected with the Presbyterian churches here in Albany, at least six became moderators of the general assembly.
Of the First church, three successive pastors attained this honor, Drs. Nott, Romeyn, Neill. The Second church sent Dr. Chester. Dr. McCauley, who went from the Third church to the ministry, was likewise honored. From the Fourth church went Dr. Darling. We have had forty-three pastors or stated supplies, their average length of service being nearly eight years and five months. They were men as ready for intellectual strife, if needful to defend the truth, as any in the ages dead. At our altars the line of priests and Levites has not failed. And the roll of our ministry has contained many distinguished names. Omitting details of the status of each church, as these may be gathered from the assembly's minutes, accessible in every pastor's study, we note in general that in 1885 we received on confession 158 souls, enough to make quite a church themselves. Our total of communicants is 3,200 ; Sunday school membership, 3,300. Our church properties aggregate in value not less than $575,000. In 1885 we raised, for congregational ex- penses, $96,837; for beneficence, $36,172 ; total, $133,011. We are raising money at the rate of over $1,000,0000 every eight years. We have contributed to every important char- itable movement in the community. We have aided in sending the gospel to almost every land on earth.
How many of our laymen are noted for their benificence ? It is a Presbyterian who now gives $50,000 to put up a building for the Y. M. C. A., and who, a little while ago, just north of our city limits, built a church worth $125,000. Upon our rolls stand names of men who have been privi- leged to give gold by handfuls to the cause of Christ. We cannot begin to mention them. Our Christian women are as ministering spirits, and the development of their activ- ity and beneficence is one of the proudest fruits of Presby- terianism. Our body has sent out theological professors, college presidents and professors, editors, authors, pastors, missionaries many. The history of God's people is a history of struggles ; but with us the struggles have been triumphant.
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Our churches, from feeble beginnings have grown powerful, reached the sacred number seven. We are surpassed by no other evangelical body of this city in number and in strength. Throughout the entire fabric of Albany's existence for a century and a quarter, Presbyterianism has been interwoven in strands of silver and gold. It is the patron of letters, friend of order and good government, teacher of philan- trophy. To our sister denominations of evangelical faith, who by our side have labored for like high ends, we offer Christian greeting and congratulate them upon their pros- perity. Their speech is the speech of Canaan ; they too are Sons of the Covenant-our brother tribes in Israel. " How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob and thy tabernacles, O Israel ! As gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lignaloes which the Lord hath planted, as the cedar trees beside the waters ! "
What spiritual blessings we have had ! From generation to generation, upon the cherub faces of our children has fallen the dew from the baptismal font. At these altars they have stood in youth to utter the sweet vows of marriage, and the solemn vows which consecrated them to God. In our hearts has been kindled the sacred and eternal fire. How many hallowed experiences to be remembered in eternity ! How many beautiful types of piety have by trials been developed ! Through varied dicipline that smote us sore, but wrought only for our good, God's providence flamed o'erhead. When our fathers and mothers lay a dying, from this earthly night they passed up through the portals of the dawn, to stand in the noonday radiance above. O, winged years, what lessons have you taught us of the goodness of our God !
In the by gone centuries many a worldly enterprise has left no sign. The parchment on which the Muse of History recorded it was thrown aside to perish. But, in the annals of God's church, no chapter can ever die. Of some years ir. our past there may be no extended record here. Nor is there record of life in an eagle's nest, save empty shells. But from them kingly birds have flown and are soaring round the sun. So in those years immortal spirits went up to God. On the eternal scrolls their names are written in letters of everlasting fire. Clothed are they in vestures of light, conquerers and crowned. To them the march of time brings joy. In historic Antwerp you sleep neath the shadow of the cathedral tower, where hang nine and ninety
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bells in perfect chime. As the quarter hours steal away, these bells ring out in music that grows continually more sweet. At the first quarter it is beautiful, at the second more beauteous yet ; for the third more heavenly still, and when the hour is full they pour out most celestial strains of all to give it coronation. Above the deep voices of the vast bass bells the silvery singing of the others makes ecstatic music more and more divine. Holy lesson taught by that cathedral chime! Joyous lesson to note the flight of time, not with sorrow but delight! Thus will we look back o'er the years ; for the ages sing of God. Thus do the heavenly intelligences mark times' flight ; not with sadness, but in- creasing rapture. Thus let us mark it till we hear the waves beat on the eternal shore. Then forever will we mark it thus, as the celestials do, in yon life that grows deeper, broader, without end. Bought with blood, though sinners once, they sin no more. Asto Jacob fourteen years seemed a few days for his love to Rachel, so to them centuries are like summer days for their love to Christ, their hearts quiv- ering with the most sublime passion possible to man-love for the God who made him. As the unwasting cycles fly, their spirits leap with rapture that ever grows. And when all the memorials of this week of pageants have passed away, then and yonder shall be seen the work of Presbyterianism in our city-its monuments no bronze tablets along our streets, nor impulse to art and letters, nor mighty organiza- tion and sumptuous shrine, but hearts that are stamped with God's signet mark-the image of Christ forever.
FIRST METHODIST CHURCH.
At the First Methodist church an interesting pro- gramme was given at the union service in the evening. The church was handsomely decorated with ever- greens and flags, and the music was exceptionally good. Prayer was offered by Presiding Elder Gates, after which the audience had the pleasure of listening to the Rev. Dr. Mark Trafton, of Boston. His remarks were extemporaneous and related more to the foundation and elements of strength within the church. Following is an abstract of his remarks :
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There are two lines of thought suggested by the occasion, phenomenal facts and philosophical results. When Freeboin Garrettson started out on his mission he could not see the future. If he could have lived and stood before the audi- ence last night, and seen the vast sea of faces he would have regarded it as a most impossible and fantastic dream. Gar- rettson and Jesse Lee started out. They could see ahead of them almost insurmountable obstacles in their way. When Lee walked upon the famous Boston common, the people thought him crazy. They understood nothing, and when Lee kneeled to the ground and prayed, such a prayer had never gone up from Boston to heaven ; and when he took from his pocket a little Bible, Boston heard the first sermon that generation had heard. The speaker related the incident of Lee's horse going through Harvard ; that is, the students took the horse through one door and out the other, saying they had graduated the doctor's horse. Lee preached the first Methodist sermon in Maine. He related the great ability and perseverance of the Methodist servants. When the body of young Methodists entered Massachusetts they found the whole territory pre-empted. They thus had a great force to contend against. They found the whole country invested with Calvinism. Mr. Trafton is evidently a weak believer in foreordination. He said, in connection with the future of Methodism from Lee's point of view that it was certainly " doomed to success." The question arises, what was the element of the success that has made the Methodist church so successful. It was their doctrine to repudiate the idea of foreordination. God will never doom a few people to hell forever and a few more to heaven. There was the doctrine of regeneration. Their doctrines were what made the Methodist church the success it has. An element of power within the church is its sociality. They are social, agreeable, pleasant ; there is not that hard formality that was found in the old Puritan church. Extemporaneous preaching was another important element of success. They avoided notes ; they took from their pockets a little Bible and preached directly to the people. The idea of young theological students talking from notes. Horace Greeley said the Methodist church had literally sung itself into existence. This singing is another strong element. Methodism is not a conservative system. It is active, alive ; was begotten by pluck and energy, and only energy and grit can keep it
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alive. The movement must be constant and onward. With much movement the Methodist creed will continue to ad- vance and finally be more great and powerful than now.
Immediately following the close of Mr. Trafton's remarks, the Rev. Merritt Hulburd, of New York, spoke as follows :
AN AMERICAN CHURCH.
Having kept an interested eye on the arrangements of this city for the celebration of the Bi-centennial of its foundation, I could not fail to see the strife of certain denominations for precedence in the matter of recognition which they should receive on this, the churches' day. In this contest we, as Methodists, could have very little interest, and even as Albanians it was almost a matter of indifference, since we desire the recognition of the fact that our civilization is Christian, rather than that it should be used to bolster a sect or increase the importance of some local body. For while it is unmistakably true that we can never have too much of Christianity in the State in its legislation and administra- tion, we have a right to look with suspicion upon any attempt to ally the State by legislation or administration with any ecclesiastical body, and the distinction between Christianity and the church needs to be kept constantly before the public mind; for they are neither identical nor conterminous. The one is the divine life in the world, operating on human hearts and lives, and as a body includes all who accept it and in whom it lives. The other exists under various forms and is of human invention, existing ostensibly for the pro- pagation of Christianity, embodying more or less of its prin- ciples and conforming to a greater or less degree to its spirit and teaching. The one is as water distilling in clouds. fall- ing in rain, dimpling in lakes, rolling in rivers that gladden as they flow, rippling in rills that make the meadows green, glittering in ice fields, heaving in the mighty ocean that enisles the continents, but everywhere is one ; the other is the distributing reservoir, in which man would catch and detain it, or direct it into channels of his own choosing. The one is eternal, changeless, indestructible, universal ; the other grows in the midst of and is modified by times and cultivations, and with them may give place to others, and like them shall pass away. The one is light, resplendent
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and abundant ; the other appears as windows, sometimes transparent, which conduct ; sometimes colored, that change and distort, and sometimes so nearly opaque as to obstruct it.
Christianity, broad, blessed, illuminating and uplifting ; to it we owe the liberties we enjoy, and the institutions of which we are so justly proud. Talk of putting God into the con- stitution ? He is there already, and there to stay. His government is no weak confederacy, seeking recognition, or the compliment of His name on a debased coin.
The nation is historically, structurally, organically Christ- ian. The materialistic philosopher who undertakes to solve the problems of history by isothermal lines and the use of globes, must of necessity find himself at loss to account for the perturbations which from time to time have occurred and the eccentricities in his historical orbit.
To say, in one line, as a ncted philosopher has done, " the instinctive propensity to drunkenness is a function of lattitude ; " and in another that " the soggy and brutalizing atmosphere of northern Europe has been counteracted by its type of religion ; while the smiling lands that skirt the Mediterranean, under bluest skies and in serenest air, have grown an inferior civilization under other influences," is to expose his reasoning to ridicule, and to undermine his own theory. Without the Nile and its periodical inundations of that valley, 600 miles in length, Egypt and its wondrous history had been an impossibility ; but the Nile still flows as when hundred-gated Thebes stood in her grandeur, or scholars walked the obelisk-sentineled courts of Heliopolis ; but the scholar is gone and the glory has departed. Brutal- ized and degraded, the descendants of a once splendid race cower at the bases of the pyramids, and the "sick man of Europe " holds ignoble sway in the land. With climate as favorable, skies as propitious, and soil as fertile as when Rome, seated on her seven hills, and from " her throne of beauty ruled the world," there now the Lazaroni basks in the sun, and lazily swallows his macaroni, careless of to- morrow, and indifferent to the fact that Italy, once the school- mistress, is now the blockhead of the nations.
Empires wax and wane, not as soils and seasons change, but in obedience to other and subtler laws, which it behoves nations and individuals to keep in mind. He who would read Divine Providence out of history, finds himself con- fronted by a vast range of unexplained and, by him, inex-
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plicable phenomena. The territory of this continent was as providentially reserved as was Palestine ; and the people to inhabit and give character to its civilization were as truly " chosen in affliction" as was ancient Israel. A Danish antiquarian sets up the claim of the discovery of this conti- nent by adventurous Norsemen 900 years ago. That may be, but nothing came of it, and the world did not come to know of it. But the sea westward of Europe and Africa was still the mare tenebrosum-the dark sea. Columbus sailed westward, not seeking a new continent, but a new route to India, mistakenly supposing it to be a shorter way. Discovered in 1492, why was it so long before it was colon- ized ? The pope divided the new world between two of his most unscrupulous vassals, Spain and Portugal ; but the one had sought to crush the truth by the inquisition, and the other had banished the Bible and those who read it from her shores, and they could neither of them enter in. France, gory-handed from the slaughter of the Huguenots, would colonize it. But how ? Let the squallor, ignorance and unthrift in the province of Quebec, contrasted with the thrift, progressiveness and intelligence of that of Ottawa, under the same government, make answer. Protestant Holland discovers and gives name to the most beautiful river of the western world, and is successful in laying the foundations of the commercial metropolis of the hemisphere and sets the stakes for the capitol city of the Empire State. But her territory was too narrow and her population too scanty for the broad lands to be peopled, and so England, populous, enterprising, brave, tenacious of purpose and ardent in the love of liberty is sifted to plant under dark skies, and on a rocky coast, the germs of a nation by puritan and pilgrim ; and from that a nation born in the cabin of the " Mayflower," and christened in a prayer meeting, a nation with the English Bible for a law book, and the charter of its liberties, became the custodian of that land designed by Providence to be the theatre of the last and highest develop- ment of civilization. Thus this nation was tutored into the establishment of the great principles of liberty in its infant stage. Instructed to reverence for God as the moral gov- ernor of the world, by the puritan independents of England; taught religious liberty by Roger Williams and the Baptists of Rhode Island, regard for social order and the institutions of religion by the Dutch Reformed and the Protestant
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Episcopalians of New York, with the Presbyterians as staunch defenders of the day and word of God, the Quakers stand- ing for the rights of man in Pennsylvania and, strange to say, the Roman Catholics in Maryland for charity and reli- gious toleration, while in Delaware and the Carolinas the Huguenots sought, with industry and patience, the establish- ment of a Christian commonwealth. But the times change and new exigencies arise. All these denominations have done much, each in its own way, and have wrought worthily and well upon the structure of civilization and progress ; but we still look for an American church which shall demonstrate its conspicuous adaptation to the condition of the new nation. Congregationalism independency shows its adapta- tion to the Massachusetts colonies and still continues the dominant sect in New England, her town meetings with their moderators and clerks, are the adaptation to civil government of the church order. But she can do nothing for the south or the frontier, and even the adjoining State of New York proves uncongenial. There, however, the Dutch church is the conservator of public morals and the custodian of religion, while the consistory of the college of churches is imitated in the board of supervisors. Virginia, during its colonial period, had for its model the English parish, and traces of that government may still be discerned. But when these colonies become a free and independent nation, federated into a central government, what denomi- nation shall unify the religious government and adapt it to the new environment ? What shall be the religion that shall bind again this bundle of fasces into a unit? The church must be created. It does not exist. Each existing organization is imported, and cannot easily be altered to suit the changed relations. A new organization, mobile, flexible, young, conforming to its environment, must appear. As runs the Hebrew parable, " When the tale of bricks is doubled Moses always appears." So, just at this juncture it comes. As a spiritual movement it has been abroad in the land for sixteen years, stirring up the people here and there. Loose and unorganized, it is only a voice crying in the wilderness. It is a force, but not yet harnessed to the machinery of society. It is as yet only a man on horseback. It has neither set up housekeeping nor set up a carriage. History, it had none, and, therefore, lost no time in hunting up precedents ; its theol- ogy, fluent and molten, had no grooves to run in, and there-
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fore, spread quickly over the land. It had no theological seminaries and therefore was not divided into " schools " of thought. It had " no language but a cry " and that it kept sounding through the land destitute of a polity, it was free to grow one indigenous to the soil, and could and did simultaneously with the republic develop a life which was suited to its home. Far removed from the despotism of the prelacy on the one hand, it was equally so from the irresponsible and disintegrating democracy of congregation- alism. Without the cumbersome conservatism of the consis- tory, or the aristocratic government of a presbyterian form, it adopted whatever was fittest to survive of each and all, it rejected whatever would hinder its progress, and became the advance guard of the pioneer, and the counsellor of the statesman. With a centralization of power equal to that of Rome it could send its life-blood to invigorate the extremi- ties of the continent, while continuing ductile and flexible as congregationalism, infringing no prerogative of the State it did not erect an " imperium in imperio," nor did it seek patronage or compromise for power. Speaking the language of the people and knowing their wants and sorrows, it has written heroic chapters of history in each decade of the past of America and proved itself a " helpmeet " indeed.
Disciplined as carefully and drilled as thoroughly as Jesuitism, its system of propagandism reaches as far as that of Loyola, the watch-fires of its mission stations gleam from the Aroostook to Mount Hood and are reflected from the peaks of the Hawaii and then leaping the bounds of the hemisphere it has advanced upon distant shores, and now tells the story of the cross on the dark continent and in far Cathay. Its missionaries tell of the wonderful works of God in more languages than pentecost, and it has enrolled more converts ten times over in this country than the Christian church in a hundred years after the ascension of Our Lord.
Essentially republican, it corresponds most strikingly to the government of the nation, its bishops to the executive, but without the power of the veto in legislation, its triers of appeals to the Supreme Court, the general conference to congress, annual conference to state governments, districts to county organizations and the quarterly conference to the town and municiple rule. Thus we see the church and the State growing side by side mutually helpful, both having organic relation.
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But again, we see the doctrinal system is also singularly adapted to meet the wants of the nation. " With a theology that-as Joseph Cook says-could be preached" proclaiming the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brother- hood of man, it was the mission of Methodism to declare a free salvation in a free land in opposition to the theory of a limited atonement which was substantially held by other denominations, the doctrine of the witness of the spirit stirred to the depths the hearts of men whose notions of religion had hitherto been oppressed with doubts and fears, and its converts made the hills and valleys ring with their new found joy. Entire sanctification seemed to promise deliverance from the power as well as the guilt of their sins.
Such was the church which sprang into existence as an organized society in 1784, five years before the adoption of the federal constitution, and not one moment too soon, either, for when peace was declared, the nation, number- ing about five millions, was burdened with an enormous debt, and war had demoralized the people. An exotic infidelity, imported from France, was loudly proclaiming that Christianity was hostile to human freedom, and some of the leaders of the people imbibed the monstrous doc- trine. Grateful for French assistance in the hour of the nation's need, French ideas were popular, and the pall of atheism seemed to be about settling upon the land. Floods of immigrants poured in, not now bringing, as the fathers did, their religious organizations with them ; but with notions of liberty which could ill brook control. The American people began to lose that homogeneity of character which the war had brought them. Lynch law usurped the place of statute, and the sparsely settled country was without schools or churches.
How was it that this land did not find itself given over to the horrors of anarchy and civil war? I maintain that the answer is in the fact that there then began a great religious movement of which the Methodist Episcopal church was the most prominent agent which gave to the State at its formative period a moral and spiritual direction, and which impressed itself upon the laws and institutions of the land, the image of the heavenly. It has been sometimes captiously said that the Methodist church did not figure very creditably in the revolution. This may easily be so, since the church was not organized till after the war had closed, and the revival,
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which had already begun, was manned entirely by preachers imported from England, the second one of whom was Capt. Thomas Webb, an officer of the British army.
The others sent out by Mr. Wesley were held by their ideas of loyalty to the home government, and remained neutral, or returned to await the issue. At the same time it is true that the sympathies of a majority of the English Wesleyans was with the colonists in their struggle. Indeed Mr. Wesley himself, though a high churchman and a Tory, immediately after the news of the battle of Lexington had reached England, addressed a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, in which he says: " I cannot avoid thinking that these colonists ask for nothing more than their legal rights, and that in the most modest and inoffensive manner that the subject would admit of." True is it also that the new church was the first to insert in its constitutional law a recognition of the new government, and to enjoin loyalty and patriotism as religious duties upon its communicants. Then, on the adoption of the federal union, in place of the "Articles of Confederation," the general conference immediately substi- tuted " The Constitution " in place of the articles referred to, and that in the face of the " State rights" doctrine then so rife, and it then proceeded unequivocally to declare that said states are and of right ought to be a sovereign and independent nation.
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