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 26
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Being still disturbed in mind as to what might occur with regard to the Oratory, I decided, after some days, to make one more trial and procure through the recommendation of Dr. Dix, as Pastor of the Sisterhood, that which I could not by my own agreement require and did not feel disposed further to request. Accordingly on the 5th of April I went
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to town for the sole purpose of seeing Dr. Dix, and upon this only subject. Finding Dr. Dix at his office, I asked him as Pastor of the Sisterhood to go out to The Sheltering Arms, new building before the reception and advise the Sisters from that day to omit from their Oratory whatever might be offensive to any of our friends. In this mission I believe I failed. Another subject was introduced by Dr. Dix, who referred to a letter written by him (not then received by me) in which he desired to know if the Trustees had an inten- tion after the Bazaar was over of dispensing with the services of the Sisters of Saint Mary. In reply I said that it was upwards of two years since the subject of the Sister- hood had been up in our Board, that the Sisters had always been sustained, the only dissenting member having resigned in consequence; that the subject of the Sisterhood in re- lation to The Sheltering Arms would come up at our annual meeting in May, because as President I had been officially addressed by a Committee of City Clergy on their account, that while I could not guarantee the action of 20 men upon a subject two years at rest I felt quite easy as to the result. Feeling that it might not be honest in me when the topic was thus introduced to withhold any thought which I had bearing upon it, and that upon my return home I should feel that I ought to have opened my mind more fully to the Pastor of the Sisters, I added with the utmost frankness, and speaking as a devoted friend of the Sisterhood from the beginning and considering their interests as separate from my own, that in my judgment the Sisters would never be in their right position until they had their own Institu- tions and were not subject to inspection and examinations by Trustees; that while I thought it very good in the Sisters to endure patiently all they had borne for The Sheltering Arms' sake, yet that I did not think it was in human nature to continue it forever, that I had more than once said, in advising them as I would my own sister, my counsel would be to give up a position so full of unpleasant- ness, adding that it was ever my habit to provide for any
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Answer to Dr. Dix
possible contingency, and that for more than two years I had made provision in case the departure of the sis- ters should at any time occur. Dr. Dix has at my request given me his recollections of that conversation as follows:
"The impression left on my mind by that conversation was, that the position of the Sisters at The Sheltering Arms was precarious; that you looked to separation, and had long been prepared for it; and that, in your judgment, as well as in my own, the Sisters would work to much better advantage in Institutions belonging entirely to them. You did not say, however, that you wished them to leave; yet I think you said, or implied, that you thought it would be better for them to do so, on their own account, though not, of course, at the present time.
"I wrote you on the 3rd of April [the letter which I had not then received] with a view to ascertain whether the Sisters might be expected to remain permanently in charge of The Sheltering Arms. The result of the conversa- tion was to satisfy me that you anticipated separation and thought it probable, in view of the extreme violence of expressions used by an influential member of the Board, and his representations to the Bishop, that the separation might come sooner than you expected or desired. This was what all parties wished to know; the enemies of the Sisters, lest they should be aiding an Institution in which those obnoxious persons served; their friends, lest they should be giving to an Institution presently to undergo a change in its internal management which they must disap- prove. The Sisters were placed in a position in which the only course consistent with self-respect seemed to be the one which they took."
Returning home from this interview I found the letter of Dr. Dix, to which, so far as related to the action of the Trustees in reference to the Sisters, I replied in these: words:
"I found upon my return home your letter, which I have
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twice carefully read. I do not know that I can add in force to what I said to-day, namely that I am quiet in mind and easy as to the result of present attacks. At the same time there are more reasons than one why I must not and cannot be forced to say much."
After some remarks upon an article in the Protestant Churchman, to which Dr. Dix in his letter had referred, and which I looked upon as hostile because the churches represented by that paper are supporting an Institution started in opposition to The Sheltering Arms and were, none of them, in the Bazaar, the article being also issued when it was too late for others to come in, but not too late for any of those already in to withdraw. I concluded thus:
"The only thing in your letter to which I object is the suggestion that there can be any such dishonesty on the part of the Trustees as to be acting a concealed and double part. The subject of the Sisterhood has never been before the board since their action of two years ago. When it comes up again I believe they will know who are their friends and what is their duty and will act fairly.
"I thought the little sacrifice I asked to-day would be of great advantage and aid to me."
Had it been my intention to counsel the resignation of the Sisters my course on a previous occasion would indicate that I should take no circuitous means to bring it about. When, in 1867, in St. Barnabas's House, a discussion which I thought would be unpleasant to the Sisters and might lead to their departure seemed inevitable and close at hand, I privately advised them at the close of the year for which at our desire they had undertaken the management of the house to decline its further charge.
Had I considered it better for themselves to follow in this case the same line of action I should plainly and without hesitation have so recommended. On the contrary, as questions regarding the Sisters would necessarily arise sooner or later in every board of Trustees with which they
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were connected, I thought it better for the Sisters to remain at their post and that their relation to the Church and its work might as well be decided now and here as in the future and elsewhere.
On Thursday, the day of reception at The Sheltering Arms, several of the Sisters were at the Institution and I observed nothing to attract attention, with the exception of a want of the accustomed cordiality on the part of the Superior, leading me to suppose her offended, although the cause was unknown.
On Friday evening, April 8th, I received the following communication:
TO THE REVEREND DR. PETERS,
President of the Board of Trustees of "The Sheltering Arms."
REVEREND SIR,
The Sisters of St. Mary hear that great agitation and criticism prevail on the subject of " The Sheltering Arms," and they are informed that it is feared the present effort to raise funds may result in failure in consequence of their connection with the Institution.
They have reason to suppose that some of the Trustees would feel greatly relieved by the withdrawal of the Sisters, and they accordingly resign their charge; the resignation to take effect within ten days from date.
SISTER HARRIET
Superior, Sisters St. Mary.
41 West 46th Street.
April 8, 1870.
And on Saturday morning, April 9th, I sent to Sister Harriet a letter of which this is the copy:
Broadway and roIst Street.
DEAR SISTER HARRIET,
Last night's mail brought in more than its usual share of communications friendly and hostile stirred up by The
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Sheltering Arms Bazaar. Among the former class I trust that I may ever be able to place letters from Sister Harriet.
It is very true as you say that great excitement prevails. I presume it is also true that some of the Trustees do feel as you indicate. How many they may be I cannot tell; as it is over two years since the subject of the connection of the Sisterhood with The Sheltering Arms came before the Trustees. I should be surprised and disappointed, however, if the Board or upon full discussion any member of it fails to see that we owe our success to the care of the Sisterhood. To a committee of clergymen, Dr. Morgan being Chairman, I replied in words that the Sisterhood had made the Institution possible and I could not turn against my friends. To the letter brought by the Committee I replied also by letter. The communication and re- ply would for your information have been sent to you had I received the extra copies of them from Dr. Morgan. As soon as I can procure them you shall have copies.
The subject necessarily comes once again before the Trustees of "The Sheltering Arms." The more I recall what you have been to us the fuller is my conviction that there can be in the Board but one opinion and one possible conclusion.
Your communication is also for the Board. When the annual meeting occurs in May will be as early as it is possible for us fully and calmly to deliberate and act. I do not want you to leave now or to have it known that you con- template it. Whatever possible gain it might be to our treasury does not influence me. Friends are dearer than money and cannot be bought. I received by the same mail with your favor the name of one who contributed $500 to the Institution two months ago and would now like his money back. I shall send it to him and would not, to save it, say that you proposed leaving.
If people will not give from confidence in the Board of
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Trustees without reference to details of management, I do not think anything will be gained by shifting sail to suit every breeze.
With regard to the Sisters themselves I have long felt that their position was a false one and must cease. They have been necessarily somewhat, perhaps you will say much, restrained and hampered here. But far worse than that they have been the object of suspicion, of unkind remark, and impertinent curiosity, from which in a public Institution we had no power to relieve them. I have said more than once that my advice to the Sisters would be, go and establish your own Institutions which you can control yourselves and in which the public can help or not as inclined. This I say not in the interest of my Institution but of the Sisterhood. For myself I shall reckon their departure a calamity.
Nevertheless I have for two years foreseen that an ulti- mate separation was probable and have thought upon the course which it might be necessary to take. It would have been short sighted and improvident for me to act otherwise. When you withdraw from me to establish your own charities I shall not oppose or object. I do not want you, however, to go on the money question. I do not want you to withdraw on account of any supposed wish of the Trustees, unless you have reasons unknown to me for believ- ing that wish to be wider spread among them than I suppose.
Above all I do not wish you to go in a hurry, and shall say nothing about this affair until the matter comes before our Board, unless you write me again desiring another course. Very respectfully and truly T. M. PETERS.
On Monday, April 11th, I received to my letter this return: TO THE REVEREND DR. PETERS.
REVEREND SIR,
Yours of April 9th is at hand.
The Sisters of St. Mary will leave "The Sheltering Arms"
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on Easter Monday, April 18th, as intimated in my note of April 8th.
SISTER HARRIET Superior, Sisters of St. Mary.
4I West 46th Street,
April 11th, 1870
A meeting of the Executive Committee had been called that day for another purpose, and before that meeting I laid all three of the foregoing papers.
After some discussion the following resolution was adopted and the Committee adjourned to meet on Wednes- day, April 13th.
"Resolved that the Executive Committee of 'The Shel- tering Arms' has heard with much surprise and regret that the ladies in charge of the house have determined to resign, and sincerely trust that they will recall the same and express fully to the President their reasons for so doing." According to the instructions contained in the resolution I waited upon the Superior of the Sisters and was told that there were no reasons to give beyond those contained in the first communications, and that that action was final. She however told me before leaving that we had failed to protect the Sisters and that I should have before called a meeting of the Board of Trustees. This report being made to the Executive Committee meeting of Wednesday, they decided that it was inexpedient and un- necessary to convene the Board, and, accepting the depart- ure of the Sisters as inevitable, appointed a Commission of three to conduct the House until the meeting of the Board.
Thus after more than five years of friendly and happy relations the connection of the Sisters with The Sheltering Arms has been suddenly and unexpectedly severed. Dur- ing all of that period they have given us their services free of compensation, and introduced a good order and system which we shall be fortunate if we can always maintain.
None so well as he who for almost the whole of that time has been daily at the Institution can know the full debt of
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gratitude we owe. None knows so well as he the anxiety they have spared us, at what sacrifice often of feeling and inclination they have consistently shaped their conduct by our desires.
All of which is respectfully submitted,
THOMAS M. PETERS, President of the Board of Trustees of "The Sheltering Arms." NEW YORK, May 9, 1870.
CHAPTER XIII
SIXTH RECTOR REV. JOHN PUNNETT PETERS 1893
OHN PUNNETT PETERS was born December 16, 1852, in the house which had originally belonged to Garrit Van Horne, one of the found- ers of St. Michael's Church, situated on what is now the southwest corner of Broadway and 94th Street. He was the second son and third child of Thomas Mc- Clure Peters and Alice Clarissa Richmond, his wife.
He made choice of the ministry in his early childhood, primarily to please his father, because he had heard the latter express a desire that one of his sons should be a clergyman. The choice once made dominated his studies and his thoughts from that time forward. He was trained first in Church Schools, at Manhattanville (where Rev. S. H. Hilliard and Bishop Seymour were among his teachers), and the Church of the Transfigura- tion in 29th Street. A sickly child, the long daily jour- ney to the latter school broke him down entirely, and after a year's rest, when his elder brother, William, went to Yale, he was entered in the next to the highest class at the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven.
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REV. JOHN PUNNETT PETERS Sixth Rector, 1893-
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Linguistic Studies
Here he stayed almost a year, and then again broke down. The next two years he spent partly in Great Barrington, Mass., partly in Bloomingdale, living largely an out-of-door life, and pursuing somewhat desultory studies by himself and with tutors. He finally entered Yale at the age of sixteen, graduating in the class of 1873. The General Theological Seminary was then distinctly retroactive and obscurantist, a veritable house of darkness, and although Dr. Thomas Peters was a graduate of the institution and one of its trus- tees, and the Dean of the Seminary was his warm friend and his son's former teacher, he preferred that his son should not study there. He wished him to learn what men were thinking and to think for himself. Young Peters was anxious to do special work in linguistics in connection with his theological studies. Accordingly, with his Bishop's consent, it was arranged that he should pursue graduate studies at Yale, and at the same time, partly in the theological school of that university and partly by outside reading, prepare him- self in theology for his canonical examinations. Peters's original desire was to prepare for work in the foreign mission field; but his own experiences in the study of the Old Testament, revealing the almost universal ignorance of the actual character and contents of the old Hebrew sacred books then prevailing in the Church, convinced him that it was his duty to devote himself to the study and exposition of those books. For this purpose he required a scientific knowledge of Hebrew and the cognate languages. It was at that time impossible to acquire such knowledge in this country, and in fact the scientific study of the Semitic languages anywhere left much to be desired. After consultation with the best authorities, it seemed desirable that Peters should
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learn the comparative method of language study as applied to the Indo-European languages, at the same time studying the Semitic languages as far as possible, and then later pursue his studies in Semitic languages at some foreign university. He made his degree of Doctor of Philosophy in course at Yale in 1876, in Sanskrit (as major), Greek and Comparative Philology, together with Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. During this period he had supported himself by private tutoring. For the next three years, until 1879, he was a tutor in Yale College, teaching Greek and occasionally Latin to the Freshman and Sophomore classes, his object in accepting that position being both to ground himself more fully in knowledge, and also to acquire the means to pursue his studies abroad.
In Peters's Freshman year in college the Berkeley Society was organized, a religious association of Church students. Peters took part in the organization and development of this Society, and was active in the mission work which it organized in the George Street Chapel of Trinity Church. Finally, about the time of his graduation from college, he found himself at the head of a large mission Sunday School at that place. He was then called upon to conduct religious services in the State Hospital located in New Haven. During his post-graduate course and the period of his tutorship he was in consequence in charge of a considerable mission work, embracing both children and adults, involving the holding of at least three services each Sunday, together with considerable visitation among the sick and poor during the week.
Peters was ordained deacon by Bishop Horatio Potter in Trinity Chapel, New York, on Sunday, July 24, 1876. The first service in which he officiated after
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his ordination was, at the request of his old teacher and friend, Bishop Seymour, then Dean of the General Seminary and Chaplain of the House of Mercy, held at the last named institution, then located at the foot! of 86th Street, in the afternoon of that same day. His first sermon was preached in St. Michael's Church on Christmas Day, 1876. Peters was ordained priest in St. Michael's Church at the Advent ordination in the following year, and officiated in that church during the rector's holidays in the summers of 1877, 1878, and 1879. In the autumn of 1879 he went abroad to study Semitic languages at the University of Berlin, where he remained for eighteen months, until the spring of 1881. During this time he also officiated occasionally at the English Chapel, and during part of the time was acting chaplain to the English colony at Berlin.
In the spring of 1881 Rev. Mortimer T. Jefferis, afterwards assistant at St. Michael's Church, asked Peters's assistance at Dresden on account of illness, and when Mr. Jefferis was compelled shortly after- wards to resign the rectorship of St. John's Church, in that city, Peters was called to be minister in charge. At that time the congregation worshipped in the Stock Exchange hall. Peters set himself to raise the money to secure a site and to provide a proper church building, making this in his own mind the limit of his incumbency at St. John's. Eighteen months later, in the autumn of 1882, a site having been purchased and the outlook for the erection of a church being sufficiently satis- factory, he resigned the charge of St. John's to resume his Semitic studies, and was succeeded by the Rev. Talliafero F. Caskey, through whose active work the present beautiful church of St. John was erected.
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In order to secure money to continue his studies, at the suggestion of Dr. Andrew D. White, then Ameri- can Minister to Germany, Peters had undertaken, while still in Berlin, to translate Müller's Politische Geschichte der neuesten Zeit, 1816-1875. This work, with an appendix by Peters himself, carrying the history down to the date of publication, was finally published by the Harpers in 1882, under the title A Political History of Recent Times.
In the meantime Peters had been married by his father in the Embassy in Berlin, August 13, 1881, to Gabriella Brooke Forman, daughter of Thomas Marsh Forman of Savannah and Helen Brooke of Virginia, who had been studying music at the Hoch- schule in that city.
After resigning the charge of St. John's Church, Dresden, Peters spent the winter of 1882-83 in Leip- zig, studying Semitic languages, devoting himself es- pecially to Assyriology under Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch. After that a month or so was spent in London copying and studying Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions in the British Museum, and then he returned to New York to take charge of St. Michael's Church during his father's absence on a long trip of ten months around the world for his health. During his residence at St. Michael's Peters began, through a series of articles in the Evening Post, a campaign to arouse interest in the study of Semitic languages in America and to induce our colleges and universities to provide proper facilities for the study of those languages. It being known that it was Peters's intention to devote himself to the teaching and exposition of the Old Testament, his old friend and teacher, Bishop Seymour, published, at about the time of his return to New York, a letter
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Professor in Philadelphia
in the Living Church, setting forth his peculiar fitness for that work, and urging his appointment to a professorship in some Church institution. For the moment nothing came of this, but in the following year, 1884, after his father's return and while Peters was temporarily acting as his assistant, through the influence of Phillips Brooks and his brother, Arthur, a chair was created for him and he was appointed to the professorship of Old Testament languages and literature in the Philadelphia Divinity School.
During his temporary engagement at St. Michael's, part of Peters's work had been to preach once a month in German. At that time there was a large German constituency both in the church itself and also at Bethlehem Chapel, at least one-half of the baptisms, marriages and burials recorded in the parish register being conducted in German. It was necessary to pro- vide religious services for these people. This was done partly by a German Sunday School and the ministra- tions of a German assistant at Bethlehem Chapel, and partly through the German services held in St. Michael's Church, at which latter, at least once a month, it was Peters's duty to preach. To continue this work, on his acceptance of the call to a professorship in the Philadelphia Divinity School, the Vestry of St. Michael's Church voted to appoint him also a regular assistant at St. Michael's, his duties being to preach once a month in the morning in English and once a month in the evening in German.
Peters was also for some time head of the Church German Society, and, as such, instrumental in pre- paring liturgical literature for the German mission work. Twenty years later he was a member of the Commission appointed by General Convention to make
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a new translation of the Prayer Book into German, on which Commission he was associated, among others, with Dr. B. W. Wells, now a member of St. Michael's Vestry.
In accepting a professorship at the Divinity School in Philadelphia, Peters at the outset expressed his disapproval of separate small divinity schools having no connection with colleges or universities, and it was in fact on the assurance of certain of the Trustees of the Philadelphia Divinity School that they would second his effort to bring the Divinity School into closer connection with the University of Pennsylvania that he accepted the position. The first step towards establishing such a connection was taken the next year, 1885, when Peters was appointed professor of Hebrew in the University of Pennsylvania. No salary was attached to this position, but it was arranged that the students of the Seminary should have certain privileges in the University in return for the services rendered the University by Peters. Peters was also able by this arrangement to transfer from the Divinity School to the University the language instruction in Hebrew, retaining in the Divinity School only the exegetical and historical study of the Old Testament. In con- junction with his old fellow-student under Professor Whitney, Prof. W. R. Harper, later president of the University of Chicago, Peters was also able to establish a Hebrew summer school in connection with the Phila- delphia Divinity School, which aided him greatly in his efforts to arouse interest in Philadelphia in Semitic studies in general and to improve the Hebrew scholar- ship of the students of the Seminary.
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