USA > New York > New York City > Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ; > Part 20
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"If we have sown unto you spiritual things-is it a great matter-if we shall reap your-worldly things?" And on receiving the offerings:
"He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth to the Lord; and look! (holding up the plates) what he layeth out it shall be paid him again,"
The effect was magical-you could almost feel the green- backs trying to move from your pocket.
What life, what soul, what vigor, what beauty, his won- drous power would throw into the Epistles of Paul. Had he belonged to the Church of Rome, he would have prayed to Paul. He did almost worship his conception of that mighty master. Any man acquainted with Richmond would know that Paul, of all the human characters of the Bible, would have been his favorite. His labors, his struggles, his trials and sufferings.
There were incidents in the life of Richmond, that would have seemed to a mind less tinged than his was, with that "melancholy madness" that is one step above genius, to bear some resemblance to the trials and contentions of Paul. Richmond believed there were times when it is as much the duty of a Christian to fight as to pray. On one occasion, certain persons disliking Mr. Richmond, changed the locks on the doors of this church, and bolted and barred it against RICHMOND, THE RECTOR! ! ! He assembled his congregation outside the church, men, women and children, and kneeling among them upon the wet ground he prayed, and then, to use his own language, he directed a battering ram against the door; "the door went down, and he came in." He afterwards stated, on
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oath, that he never performed any act of religious duty from higher or purer motives, or more free from anger or passion.1
But the manifestation of his real greatness, was in his preaching. He did not believe that "the foolishness of preaching" meant foolish preaching. He always spoke without notes. He opened his little Greek testament, read his text by translation from the original; gave a clear and always interesting description of the circumstances under which the text was spoken or written; gave its con- nection with the context, and then proceeded, "Rejoicing like a strong man to run a race," into the doctrine and philosophy of his subject.
Father Richmond's was the analytical method. He had great contempt for mere rhetoric, and held it alto- gether unsuitable to the desk. The priest had to deal with men, earnestly, in and about the most solemn and important concerns of the soul. Religious belief and faith must be bottomed upon facts, truths; the hearer must not only be induced to yield assent, but he must be convinced; it was of no consequence whether he was pleased or displeased, so he was, even in spite of himself, if need be, convicted and convinced. The reason must be satisfied, or religion would be a mere emotion, and soon wither and die. This result, this convincing of the intellects of men, could only be accomplished by patient, plodding, laborious arguments, reasons, proofs; and so he set about his tasks. The first ten
1 " In Milwaukee he was universally known as Father Richmond and was, I am told, the first to work among the poor who retained a vivid and affectionate recollection of him. He insisted that they should come and be welcome in the pew-owned or rented St. Paul's and his sermon 'Tell John . . . and the poor have the gospel preached to them,' in which he told the rich that the poor were coming into that church, was the occasion of locking him out, as above described. A man who was present told me that he re- peated the last clause 'the poor have the gospel preached to them, and then, rising on his toes, looked round silently for the poor
then thun- dered: . then exclaimed: 'Where are they?' ยท
'You have driven them out,' and proceeded with great
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Richmond's Eloquence
minutes of a sermon were occupied with short sentences; the foundations of his arguments were slowly and carefully laid, and the structure of his theory arose upon it as regu- larly, and stood as firmly and was as plainly seen, as a marble palace upon its foundations. The beauties of his sermons were beauties of proportion, symmetry, adapt- ation, not artificial ornaments and figures of speech. So that by the time he began to grow excited, when his eye began to blaze, and his cheek to grow pale, when he began to roll the thunders and dart the lightnings of his genius; you had been prepared for it; he had raised you up, had made you ashamed of the littleness of this world, and for the hour at least, he had stilled its ambition, its jealousy, its animosities; he had magnetized and inspired you; and speaker and hearer seemed to rise together into a clearer air and a higher life.
This result attests eloquence in its highest development. You were not carried off in a balloon of rhetoric, or on a cloud of rainbow beauties; but you had gone with him, step by step, up the mountain side, you knew every foot of the ascent, and you could look where he pointed, far above the petty pursuits of life, to the pinnacles of faith and duty.
Fine speaking, artful rhetoric, what the world accepts as oratory, are poor contemptible things, when compared with the eloquence Richmond possessed and constantly
vehemence to bring the accusation home to the consciences of his hearers. As a result the vestry undertook to exclude him from the church in the manner narrated above. When Mr. Richmond undertook to break the door in on Sunday morning, using a timber which was lying near by as a battering ram, it is narrated that it was done to the Invocation: 'In the name of the Father'(bang) 'and of the Son' (bang) 'and of the Holy Ghost ' (bang), and the door was driven in. He considered it a religious service and this Invocation incident was long famous in Milwaukee. The vestry took the matter into court and the court sustained the rector's right to enter his church and preach when he pleased." (From a private letter.) Later Mr. Richmond resigned the rectorship of St. Paul's and started All Saints' Church, Milwaukee, that he might have greater freedom to preach the Gospel to the poor.
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practiced. He looked, as I have said, with contempt upon mere tricks of speech. I shall never forget the roguish look, with which in a sermon, he turned his gaze upon several lawyers present, and informed them that Mercury was the god of orators and thieves.
One remarkable effect of his preaching was that while you were perfectly delighted, it was with his subject entirely, and not with what he said; his language was but the medium through which the minds of his hearers seemed to catch glimpses of immortalthings; as, when you look througha tele- scope, you see the star, but never think of the glass. It was only when the sermon was ended, and you walked out into the common air and encountered common things, and his great thoughts began to fade gradually from your memory, as the headlands "recede and disappear" when, on the ocean's bosom, you bid your "Native land, Good night."- then it was, that you began to think of Richmond, and that wondrous speech that had lifted you so above the littleness of common thoughts.
He was at times fearfully personal. Some men whom he believed to be great rascals, in high confidence of their wealth and social and political standing, writhed beneath his pointed denunciations for a while, but soon sought easier seats in other churches. One such sermon we all remember .- There was awful fluttering among his birds; and clamorous complaints of his personalities were made to him. The next Sunday, he rose to preach, and read his text :
"And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables," etc.
"Brethren," said he, "I hear that the sermon I preached last Sunday has been objected to, that it was too pointed and personal. I have selected this text, as an instance in the life of the Savior, of somewhat pointed preaching." He then went on, applying his scourge, until I believe all
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Pointed Preaching
were convinced that his former sermon was not as per- sonal as it might have been.
I cannot close without reminding you how sublimely he celebrated the ordinances and sacraments of the church. I can only remind you of it; no tongue could describe it. If you have seen him by the sick bed of your dying children, as I saw him beside mine, in the very ante-chamber of death, baptizing little innocents, who were just fluttering like stray angels, wandered unawares from the pearly gate, and longing to return, as loth to remain in this sin stricken, wretched world; if you have seen him stretching out his arms repeating the solemn service, " We receive this child into the congregation of Christ's flock, and do sign her with the sign of the cross"; if you have clung to him for consolation when your wife and children, in the chamber of another dying child, were trembling and crying around you, and your own heart strings were breaking with grief; if you have gone with him, been led, sustained and supported by him to the grave of some dear one, gone before you; if you have heard from him, "I am the resurrection and the life," and "Whoso believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die"; and, then, those dreadful words, that ring in your ears like the knell of last hopes while your heart is dissolving with sorrow: "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust "; if you have followed him through such scenes, then cherish the memory of them in your hearts, you will never know the like again.
One of Mr. Richmond's sermons of this period was published in Milwaukee, under the title The Palm Sunday Sermon, and reached a third edition in 1859.
It was inevitable that a man of Mr. Richmond's temperament should be deeply stirred by the Civil War. His "American Hymn," which he entitled A Chant for the Contest, Constitution, Country and Continent
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shows the fervor of his zeal for the nation and for liberty :
I
Ho for the Westward! Lengthen the border! Listen, thou earth, to the fiat of God : Angels exulting, hearken, while Order Springs, as the serpent sprang from the rod Held by the son of Amram, the day
When God, through the Sea, hewed Israel's way:
CHORUS:
Ho for the Westward! kindle the chorus, God's Fiery Pillar flames right before us.
II
Ho for the Westward, nestled in wonders,
Law, like an EAGLE, looked on the world, Bounded, full grown, from Sinai in thunders, Fluttered o'er Greece like a banner half furled, Eyried a season in old iron Rome,
Flew over Europe, westward for home.
CHORUS:
Ho for the Westward! thunder the chorus, God's ROYAL EAGLE soars right before us.
III
Ho for the Westward! Herald the war-cry! Who shall resist the TRUMPET of God?
Tyrants, Columbia's fall is a far-cry! Freedom, ye despots, now wields the rod: Strike off the fetters, lay down your rod, Four millions of bond-slaves are Freed-men of God!
CHORUS: Ho for the Westward! herald the story, God's clarion TRUMPET rings out before ye.
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IV
Ho for the Westward! Strengthen the border! CHRIST AND HIS CROSS! THOU BANNER OF GOD! Now on the Chaos God stampeth Order, For Jesus is Truth, to rebels a rod! STARS FOUR AND THIRTY, ORDER AND LAWS!
STAR SPANGLED BANNER, CHRIST AND THE CROSS.
CHORUS:
Ho for the Westward! TRUMPET the story, PILLAR and EAGLE, GOD'S BANNER O'er ye!
In 1861 Mr. Richmond went to the field with the Second Wisconsin Regiment as chaplain, telling his friends before he went that he had "a presentiment that I shall never return to the little church again; a presentiment that I shall never return at all. I am not very prudent. I may be killed in battle. I may die of disease. If so, let my friends meet in the little church and pray and speak of me just as I was. Tell them I had great faults, but tell them that I loved them and labored and longed for their salvation." As he foresaw, he did not return. The excitement proved too much for him, and, after another nervous breakdown, he retired from the active life of preaching to a farm which he owned at Poughkeepsie where his family had been living for some years. Here he was murdered by an angry farmhand with a fancied grievance on July 20, 1866.
Mr. Richmond was married June 4, 1835, to Sarah Seaton, daughter of Henry Seaton of Santa Cruz, by whom he had six children, four daughters and two sons, of whom two survive. Three of his children were long members of this parish. The eldest daughter, Sarah Seaton, an invaluable worker, was for over thirty-
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six years superintendent of the Sheltering Arms. She was also an active member of St. Michael's branch of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions and repre- sented the parish in various capacities in benevolent and missionary work. She died December 21, 1906, and was succeeded in her position as superintendent of the Sheltering Arms by another sister, Katharine Seaton, who had been, since its foundation, the head of the Furniss cottage of that institution. Mr. Richmond's eldest son, Henry Seaton, died in his infancy. His second son and youngest child, William, is a priest of the Church and was for twenty years rector of All Saints' Church, Orange, N. J.
There are several memorials of Rev. James Cook Richmond in the various churches with which he was connected. In St. Michael's Church he is commemo- rated by a Credence in the form of a niche, decorated by mosaics and bearing the inscription :
TO THE GLORY OF GOD. IN MEMORY OF JAMES COOK RICHMOND, PRIEST. RECTOR 1837-1842.
This was presented to the church by his family. An- other memorial, connected in a sense with this church, appropriate to his missionary zeal and activities, is the James Cook Richmond scholarship at Cape Mount, Liberia. Each year on Whitsunday for many years the children of the Sheltering Arms have presented in St. Michael's Church an annual contribution which goes to support this scholarship in Mr. Richmond's name.
REV. THOMAS MCCLURE PETERS, S.T.D. Fifth Rector, 1858-1893
CHAPTER XII FIFTH RECTOR REV. THOMAS MCCLURE PETERS 1858-1893.
L
IKE his two predecessors, Dr. Peters was of New England origin and birth. He was born "in an old wooden house in High Street, Boston, Mass., June 6, 1821, in the night, towards morning," the second son and third child of Edward Dyer Peters, originally of Blue Hill, Me., a well-known lumber and commission merchant of Boston. He was sixth in the line of descent from Andrew Peters, who came to Boston about the middle of the seventeenth century, and died at Andover, Mass., December 13, 1713. His mother was Lucretia McClure, of a Scotch-Irish family which came to Boston from the neighborhood of Lon- donderry, Ireland, in 1729, part of a colony of religious immigrants who founded the Presbyterian Church in Federal Street, Boston. Thomas Peters's ancestors were not in any sense famous men. On the other hand, each and every one of them on the Peters side was a good citizen, active and useful in Church and State and successful in affairs. His McClure ancestors were dis- tinctly religious men, all of them on this side of the water being deacons in the Federal Street Church,
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while two of his uncles were Congregational ministers.
It was the Unitarian movement which brought the Peters family into the Episcopal Church. When Dr. Channing, the pastor of the Federal Street Church, turned Unitarian, Deacon Thomas McClure, after whom his grandson, the subject of this sketch was named, unable to agree with his pastor's unorthodox position, resigned his office of deacon, gave up his pew and removed to the Park Street Church. His daughter Lucretia and her husband, Edward Dyer Peters, who were fellow attendants with him at the Federal Street Church, were attracted by the character and preaching of Alonzo Potter, who had recently come to St. Paul's Church, Boston, and took a pew there. And here Mr. Peters, who, as was frequently the case with Congrega- tionalists, had not been baptized in his infancy, was baptized with four of his children, including Thomas, on April 6, 1827, and the whole family entered the Church.
During Peters's infancy the family lived at No. 12 Rowe Street, the Brooks and Evarts families living in the same street. Between the ages of seven and eleven years Peters attended the Chauncey Hall School, of which he says that it was "the best school for in- structing the children in English that I have ever had any knowledge of." There he came to the front in arithmetic and also obtained the title "Honest Tom," for which, however, he suffered severely. He narrates how
the teacher of mathematics on more than one occasion on leaving his classroom and returning found it noisy. His question would be: "Tom, who has been talking?" Reply: "I have, sir."-"Anybody else?"-"Yes, sir," -"Who?"-"I can't tell." The old ruffian would then
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Peters's Boyhood
take me by the ear and drag me about the room, insisting that I should tell him, which I never did.
His later characteristics seem to have shown them- selves distinctly at this early period. He writes :
I had always a spirit rebellious against injustice, and refused to submit to undeserved punishment. I had al- ways a wretched hand-writing, much to Mr. Thayer's chagrin. One day he set out to whip me for not writing better, and sent me into a little room, called an office, where he was in the habit of punishing boys at his leisure. After school he came into the office and told me to hold out my hand, intending to strike the palm with a ruler. I told him he had no right to whip me for what I could not help, and thrust my hands into my pockets. He then hit me with his ruler wherever he could, and dismissed me. As I went out I said to him: "I won't do anything the better for you, old Thayer," and ran off. His way home lay past our door, and he went in, pretending to be dreadfully grieved at my behaviour. As Mother wished to please him, she made me carry him a dish of strawberries and cream the next morning, which I most unwillingly handed him. No other discipline followed. Mr. Thayer tried hard to make an orator of me for his public exhibitions, and one time tried to drill me on Cowper's "Address to his Mother's Picture," a small profile in a frame being placed in my hand to be apos- trophized. The orator was not there, and he gave it up.
One of his brothers, not long after his death, thus described his characteristics in a letter to the writer:
Thomas had one characteristic which commenced in his earliest days and lasted until he died. It was his great energy and determination. I never knew him to com- mence anything that he did not succeed in finishing, and in the very best manner. When he was a boy, and a scholar at St. Paul's Sunday School in Boston, he accepted a position as librarian of the school. The library was then in
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a very bad condition, the books were very dirty and worn, and many books taken out before he commenced had not been returned. He at once called upon every one who had any books that had been taken out beyond the usual time to return them, and every Sunday he carried large quantities of books home and evenings during the week covered them all neatly with thick paper, and wrote the name of each book on the back, and continued to do so until he had them all covered. Then every one that took books out-he took the name of the boy and the book, and required them to be returned the next Sunday, or to let him know the reason why. The Sunday School Superin- tendent said they never had before a librarian that would compare with him. I never knew him to tell a lie; and, if asked a question by the teachers or his parents, he would always answer truly, or else he would not answer at all, and no threats or abuse by any one could ever make him answer if it would implicate any one else; but if he had transgressed any law of the school himself, he would always answer and tell the truth. He was the most conscientious person I ever saw, and had a keen sense of right and wrong.
After leaving Mr. Thayer's school, Peters, at the age of eleven, went to the famous Boston Latin School, where the Hon. William E. Evarts and the late Rev. E. A. Washburn of Calvary Church were among his schoolmates, the latter one of his life-long and most intimate friends. He writes of himself that he
ranked low in Latin and Greek departments. Stood at the head in English, especially mathematics. Left that school in this wise: Dillaway, the Head, demanded of me a com- position to be written on Saturday afternoon, our half- holiday, to atone for marks for talking. I did not con- sider that he had any control over my holiday, and refused to write it. He then set out to thrash me, and ordered me into an unused room. I refused to submit, and pre- pared for a struggle, upon which he left me and promised
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Home Life
me that I should have my whipping after school. Thinking that he proposed to delegate Mr. Gardner, a large and strong usher, for the purpose, I concluded to absent myself. Not daring to go home, I started on a walk into the country. At night I stopped at a farmhouse and asked to be allowed to sleep on the hay in the barn. The people took me in and gave me good cheer and the best bed. Started next morning for Framingham. A railroad surveyor overtook me, gave me a nice dinner at his table and a ticket to Worcester.
What the ending of this episode was, and the method in which Peters was finally brought back to Boston, I have been unable to ascertain. I only know that he was gone two or three days and that on his return he was not sent back to the Latin School, but finished his preparation for college in the private schools of Mr. Leverett (editor of the Latin dictionary) and Mr. Hubbard.
The home life of the family was a happy one, par- ticularly for Thomas. He was beloved by every mem- ber of the family, and his relations to each and all his brothers and sisters continued intimate and affec- tionate until death. To the end of his life it was his custom to spend every Thanksgiving at the old home- stead, a title which the family applied to Mr. E. D. Peters's country home at Jamaica Plains, now part of Boston, sometimes taking one or more of his children with him. He was especially devoted to his eldest sis- ter and his mother, a woman of a strong and very noble character, to whom the son was much indebted for the spiritual and intellectual side of his nature. The relations between the two were always most affectionate, his mother's correspondence with him during his college life and afterwards to the day of her death revealing
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the most intimate and tender relations. His father was a man much immersed in business and in the nature of the case less close to his children in their spiritual and mental growth than the mother. Outside of his business his interests were not broad; but he was a man of strong character, high integrity, charitable, religious, devoted to his family and a good father to his children. He died a wealthy man, but to the day of his death he seems to have been worried about his finances and esteemed himself in danger of poverty. He always lived simply and the manner of life of the family was such as would be considered to-day narrow and restricted. The theatre, dancing, balls, or even dinner parties were things unknown, and social relations were of the simplest. Mrs. Peters seems to have had a natural love of the beautiful which displayed itself always in a love of flowers and the beauties of nature, and later in life, after she began to travel, both in this country and abroad, in art and literature also. But the life of the Peters household during Thomas's boyhood, as far as art and literature were concerned, was bare and narrow, the principal mental recreations of which we hear being lectures and sermons. Both parents also loved simple religious poetry, especially that of Cowper, after whom they named one of their sons. But if the home and social life were narrow and provincial, they were at the same time sound, whole- some, and refined.
Of his religious impressions as a child Peters writes:
I went to church assiduously as a matter of course twice, and to Sunday School at Grace and St. Paul's Churches three times a Sunday. I was always resolving to be a better boy, but do not remember any distinct religious impressions. I always took part in the service, and then
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Religious Life of Family
during the sermon laid down my head and went to sleep. I do not believe I reverenced the clergy much, for at St. Paul's, in the Sunday School, I nicknamed Dr. Stone "Cephas" and always so spoke of him.
The religious life of the family was of the Puritanical stamp characteristic of the period. There was a rigid observance of Sunday, under the old Jewish name of the Sabbath, but in a method not Jewish but evolved by the Puritans of the seventeenth century. The Sabbath began on Saturday evening. At sundown on that day books and games were put away; but at sundown on Sunday the Sabbath had come to an end and the chil- dren were set to prepare their tasks for the following day. Every Sunday morning, rain or shine, Mr. Peters went with his wife and children to St. Paul's Church, but in the evening of almost every Sunday they attended service at a church of some other denomination, particu- larly the Methodist or Baptist, to which, and especially the Methodist, Mr. and Mrs. Peters felt attracted on account of their enthusiasm. It was the period of the Evangelical revival and the Peters family felt its influence.
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