USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 19
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What a beautiful and instructive example of toleration is set forth in this brief history of creeds and forms of belief ! During the whole of this
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critical period of the war of belief and unbelief in religious matters, I never learned that the least commotion ever disturbed publie tranquillity. It was, indeed, occasionally otherwise in political affairs ; but we look in vain for occurrences simi- lar to those which disfigured the days of our colonial vassalage under the reign of that royal vagabond, Cornbury, and some of his successors. Such was the homage paid to the Declaration of Independence.
I had the opportunity, in the Magazine street church, of listening to a discourse full of personal observation and reminiscences, from the lips of Stewart, the Walking Philosopher, as the books call him ; a man of altitude, whose inferior limbs provided him with peculiar facilities to visit almost every part of the earth as a pedestrian, before we had railways, and who enlightened his audience with descriptive touches of Egypt and her pyra- mids, of Nova Zembla, "and the Lord knows where." I shall never forget his unostentatious, though impressive appearance ; his lank figure, his long neck, his long nose, his wide mouth, and his broad white hat.
There is one other subject I must place within the background of this picture of past times, and that is street preaching. The older inhabitants tell us we had much of it in the earlier condition of this city, shortly after the inauguration of the
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first President of the United States. I remember well repeated examples of this sort of edification in the public ways. I shall specify but one, and that was to be found in the person of Lorenzo Dow. Dow was a Wesleyan, of rare courage and deter- mined zeal. He scarcely ever presented himself without drawing together large multitudes of hearers, in part owing to his grotesque appear- ance, but not a little arising from his dexterous elocution and his prompt vocabulary. He was faithful to his mission, and a benefactor to Methodism in that day. His weapons against Beelzebub were providential interpositions, won- drous disasters, touching sentiments, miraculous escapes, something after the method of John
Bunyan. His religious zeal armed him with Christian forbearance, while his convictions al- lowed him a justifiable use of the strongest flagel- lations for besetting sins. Sometimes you were angered by his colloquial vulgarity ; but he never descended so low as Huntington, the sinner saved, the blasphemous coal-heaver of England. He was rather a coarse edition on brown paper, with battered type, of Rowland Hill. Like the disci- plined histrionic performer, he often adjusted him- self to adventitious circumstances ; in his field ex- ercises, at camp meetings, and the like, a raging storm might be the forerunner of God's immediate wrath ; a change of elements might betoken Para-
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dise restored, or a new Jerusalem. He might be- come farcical or funereal. He had genius at all times to construct a catastrophe. His apparent sincerity and his indubitable earnestness sustained and carried him onward, while many ran to and fro. Repartec, humor, wit, irony, were a portion of his stock in trade, the materials he adroitly managed. Sometimes he was redundant in love and the affections, at other times acrimonious and condemnatory. Altogether Lorenzo was an orig- inal, and a self-sustained man, and would handle more than the rhetorician's tools. His appearance must have occasionally proved a drawback to his argument, but he was resolute and heroic. His garments, like his person, seemed to have little to do with the detersive influence of cleanliness. With dishevelled locks of black flowing hair over his shoulders, like Edward Irving of many tongues, and a face which, like the fashion of our own day, rarely ever knew a razor, his piercing gray cyes of rapid mobility, infiltrated with a glabrous moist- ure, rolled with a kecn perception, and was the frequent index of his mental armory. I have implied that he was always ready at a rejoinder ; an instance or two may be given. A dissenter from Dow's Arminian doctrines, after listening to his harangue, asked him if he knew what Calvin- ism was ? " Yes," he promptly replied :-
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' You can and you can't, You will and you won't ; You'll be damned if you do, And you'll be damned if you don't.'
That, sir, is Calvinism, something more than rhyme." I, who have rarely left New York for a day during the past fifty years, (save my year abroad,) was in the summer of 1824 at Utica with a patient. It so happened that Dow, at that very time, held forth in an adjacent wood, having for his audience some of the Oneida and Reservation In- dians, with a vast assemblage of the people of Utica and the neighboring villages. Mounted on an ad- vantageous scaffolding, he discoursed on the rc- wards of a good life, and pictured the blessings of heaven. Upon his return to the hotel there was found among the occupants a Mr. Branch and old General Root, so familiarly known for the oppro- brious name of " the Big Ditch," which he gave to Clinton's Canal. These two gentlemen ad- dressed Dow, told him they had heard him say much of heaven, and now begged to ask him if he could describe the place. " Yes," says Dow, with entire case. " Heaven is a wide and expan- sive region, a beautiful plain, something like our prairie country-without any thing to obstruct the vision-there is neither Root nor Branch there." Dow had one great requisite for a preacher ; he feared no man. With unflinching resolution he
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presented himself every where, and if perchance signs of a rude commotion among his auditors manifested themselves, he met them like White- field, and exclaimed-These bitter herbs make good sauce and promote digestion. He might then be listened to with breathless attention. All annoy- ances he reckoned as the workings of Providence in his behalf, and preserving a sort of armed neu- trality, kept aloof from personal interference, con- forming to the advice of Roger Vose, "Let every man skin his own skunk."
There were but two houses of public wor- ship of the Methodist Society when I first heard him, the first erected in John street, with old Peter Williams, the tobacconist, as sexton. The old negro was then striving to sustain a rival opposition in the tobacco line, with the famous house of the Lorillards. The other meet- ing-house was in Second, now Forsyth street. In this latter I have listened to Dow from the pulpit, with his wife Peggy near him, a functionary of equally attractive personal charms. A reciprocal union of heads and hearts seemed to bind them together. In short, he was far more fortunate in the choice of his spouse than his great forerunner John Wesley. We are not to forget that Moors- field was mad with threats of damnation when Lorenzo Dow commenced as an itinerant spiritual instructor with us. Lorenzo rarely, I believe, for-
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sook, even for expediency's sake, the line of his vocation. Blending, as often was the case in those days, with the itinerant priesthood, the offices of the physician and the preacher, he might have sometimes administered a bolus for relief ; but I am unaware that he adopted the " Primitive Physic " of his Great Master, and dealt out crude quicksilver by ounces to alleviate physical ills.
But let me ask who now shall estimate the advance of that vast denomination of Christians from that period, with the solitary and starveling magazine of William Phoebus as the exponent of its doctrines, up to its present commanding condi- tion, with the venerable names of Hedding, Fisk, Durbin, Olin, Simpson and Stevens, among its re- corded apostles, with its rich and affluent period- ical literature, its well-endowed schools and col- leges, its myriad of churches, its soul-sustaining melodious hymns, its astounding Book Concern, with its historian Bangs, and its erudite M'Clin- tock among its great theological professors and authors.
If my memory fails me not, in the month of May, 1819, arrived in this city William Ellery Channing, with a coadjutor, both distinguished preachers of the Unitarian persuasion, of Boston. They were solicitous to procure a suitable place of worship. They made application at churches of different denominations of religious belief, to be
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accommodated at the intermediate hours between the morning and afternoon service, but in vain. They next urged their request at several of the public charities where convenient apartments might be found, but with the same result. Like the two saints in Baucis and Philemon-
"Tried every tone might pity win, But not a soul would let them in."
Still not wholly disheartened, a communication was received from them, through a committee, ad- dressed to the trustees of the College of Phy- sicians and Surgeons, then in Barclay street. The Board was forthwith summoned, and the special business of the meeting fully discussed, but with some warmth of feeling. This communication read as follows :-
" May 11, 1819.
" To DAVID HOSACK, M. D.
"SIR :- It may be known to you that there are individuals in this city who have been accustomed to receive religious instruc- tion from pastors who are not associated with the regular clergy of this place. Some of those gentlemen would be gratified to have it in their power to improve the opportunities for a con- tinuance of this instruction, which are occasionally afforded by the temporary visits of the clergy of their acquaintance to this city.
" The subscribers would, on this occasion, particularly men- tion that the Rev. William E. Channing, of Boston, is expected to pass the next Sunday with his friends in New York.
"Emboldened by a consciousness of the liberality which dis- tinguishes your enlightened profession, they take the liberty to
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desire you to lay before the Board of the Medieal College their request, that the leeture-room of that institution may be used for the purposes above alluded to. They would eonfine their request for the present, to the use of the room on the next Sunday, but would venture to suggest that there may probably be future oeea- sions when a repetition of the favor now asked, would be grate- fully received, and in such ease they would be happy to comply with any terms as to compensation which the College may deem proper.
We are, Sir, with great respeet,
Your obedient servants,
I. G. PEARSON, H. D. SEDGWICK, H. D. SEWALL.
NEW YORK, May 10, 1819.
"PROCEEDINGS OF THE COLLEGE.
"Letter from I. G. Pearson, H. D. Sedgwick, and Henry D. Sewall, was read :
" Resolved, That this College grant permission to the Rev. W. E. Channing, of Boston, to perform divine serviee in the Hall of this University on the ensuing Sunday, as requested in the above communication.
" The Registrar of the College, John W. Francis, was author- ized to furnish a copy of said resolution to said committee, duly signed by the President of the Board and the Registrar."
On the following Sabbath, Dr. Channing en- tered the professional desk of the larger lecture- room, and delivered, in his mellowed accents, a dis- course to a crowded audience, among whom were his associate brother preacher, and several pro- fessors of the college. But two or three days had transpired, from the occurrence of this first preach-
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ing of Unitarianism, before it was loudly spoken of, and in terms of disapprobation not the mildest. The censurc on such a pernicious toleration came strongest from the Presbyterian order of clergy. I heard but one prominent Episcopalian condemn the whole affair, but that condemnation was in emphatic phrascology. There doubtless werc others. Inquiries were made what individuals had constituted the mecting ; and as a majority happened to be the professors of the college, they werc particularly destined to receive the hardest blows. Some three days after that memorable Sunday, I accidentally met the great theological thunderbolt of the times, Dr. John M. Mason, in the bookstore of that intelligent publisher and learned bibliopole, James Eastburn. Mason soon approached me, and in earnestness exclaimed, " You doctors have been engaged in a wrongful work ; you have permitted heresy to come in among us, and have countenanced its approach. You have furnished accommodations for the devil's disciples." Not wholly unhinged, I replied, " We saw no such great evil in an act of religious toler- ation ; nor do I think," I added, "that one indi- vidual member is responsible for the acts of an entire corporation." " You are all cqually guilty," cried the doctor, with enkindled warmth. “ Do you know what you have done ? You have ad- vanced infidelity by complying with the request
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of these skeptics." "Sir," said I, " we hardly felt disposed to sift their articles of belief as a re- ligious society." " There, sir, there is the diffi- culty," exclaimed the doctor. "Belief : they have no belief-they believe in nothing, having nothing to believe. They are a paradox ; you cannot fathom them : how can you fathom a thing that has no bottom ?" I left the doctor drcadfully indignant, uttering something of the old slur on the skeptical tendencies of the faculty of physic. Such was the beginning of Unitarian public worship in this city.
If there be present any of that religious asso- ciation within the sound of my voice, I throw myself upon their clemency, that they be not offended by my ecclesiastical facts. I aim at a ve- racious historical narrative of times long elapsed, and I feel that my personal knowledge of many members of that religious persuasion will secure me from inimical animadversion by so enlightened and charitable a denomination. Unitarianism had indeed its advocates among us long before the pil- grimage of Channing in 1819. Everybody at all versed in the progress of religious creeds in this country will, I believe, assign to Dr. James Free- man the distinction of having been the first Uni- tarian minister of the first Unitarian church in New England. Hc promulgated his faith from the pulpit of King's Chapel in Boston, which
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church, however, had been vacant for some time, owing to political circumstances growing out of the American Revolution. He thus became the means of converting the first Episcopal church of the New England States into the first Unitarian church. Having been refused ordination by Bishop Seabury, of Connecticut, Freeman received a lay ordination by his society alone, as their rec- tor and minister, in 1787. I know nothing of him personally ; but the old and the young tell us he was of spotless integrity, of a sweet demeanor, and heavenly minded. He was an active promoter of the Massachusetts Historical Society ; he was a correspondent of Lindsley and of Belsham. The distinguished Channing, who had been a rigid Calvinist, was converted by Freeman into a Uni- tarian. John Kirkland, so long the admired Presi- dent of Harvard University, impressed with like theological doctrines, was sedulous in his calling, and earnest in making known the "Light of Na- ture," a work of curious metaphysical research from the acute mind of Abraham Tucker, pub- lished under the assumed name of Edward Search.
That our Boston friends had favored us with disciples of that faith in this city before that time is most certain, else a society of that order of be- lievers could not have been so rapidly formed as appears by their organization in Chambers street in 1821, when the Rev. Edward Everett delivered
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the dedication sermon, with suitable exercises by the Rev. Henry Ware, jun. ; again, at the instal- lation of their new building, corner of Prince and Mercer streets, in 1826, when Dr. Channing preached the dedication sermon, and the Rev. Dr. Walker offered the final prayer. Still further, we find the Church of the Messiah, in Broadway, con- secrated and the installation sermon delivered by Dr. Walker, and the pastoral duties assigned to Dr. Dewey ; but, for some years past, these have been discharged by Dr. Osgood. And again, we find the organization of the Church of the Divine Unity completed in 1845, the pastoral duties de- volving on Dr. Bellows ; and again, the last-named church being disposed of to the Universalist So- ciety, we witness the magnificent edifice for Uni- tarian worship, called All Souls' Church, situated on the Fourth Avenue, consecrated December 25, 1855, the Rev. Dr. Bellows, pastor .*
The writings of Lindsley, of Priestley, of Bel- sham, of Wakefield, were not wholly unfamiliar
* The Rev. Dr. Osgood, in his Historical Discourse, entitled "Twenty-five Years of a Congregation," thus expresses himself, when speaking of the origin and progress of the Unitarian wor- ship in this city :- " Dr. Channing preached to a large audience in the Hall of the Medical College, Barclay street, which was granted by the Trustees, notwithstanding violent opposition from some of the professors of the institution. Thus, to the medical profession, belongs the honor of giving our form of Liberal Chris- tianity the first public hearing in New York."
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works in this city ; nor could those early fathers, so often ransacked in the polemical disquisitions on the church of the first three centuries, have been altogether overlooked by our scholars and divines. This inference I deduce from the indignation which so generally sprung up among the patrons of the work when the American edition of Rees' Cyclo- pædia was commenced by Samuel F. Bradford. This enterprising publisher had in his prospectus announced that that great undertaking would be revised, corrected, enlarged, and adapted to this country. It was soon seen that, among other ar- ticles, that of accommodation in theology, which the learned Rees affirmed was a method that served as a way for solving some of the greatest difficulties relating to the prophecies, had been maltreated by an American reviser, reputed to be Dr. Ashbel Green, in Bradford's reprint. This unwarrantable act created uneasiness here, as well as among our Eastern brethren, and had nearly jeopardized the patriotic intentions of the noble- hearted Philadelphian, Bradford, whose purpose was to enrich the literature and philosophy of our Republic with that monumental work. The dis- satisfaction at this literary fraud pervaded so many patrons here and elsewhere that I, even at that early date, came to the conclusion that Unitarian- ism could scarcely be classed among the novelties of the day, and was not limited to any one section
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of the country. The perverted article doubtless partook originally of the religious faith of the London editor. Never did the old Anthology Club present a nobler independence on the rights of opinion and of literary property than in their criti- cism on the affected emendation of the American copy of Rees. It is but justice to state of this great work, which still so justly holds a place in our libraries, that these disgraceful mutilations of Rees ceased, after the reprint of the first volume of the Cyclopedia, and the honest Bradford had weighty reasons to congratulate himself on the seasonable reproofs administered against the unjust editors by the Tudors, and Kirklands, and Buck- minsters of " The Literary Emporium."
While in London I was a frequent visitor of Dr. Rees. A more captivating example of the Christian charities enshrined in one mortal, the eye could not light on. He possessed a tall and athletic frame, and a countenance of great benig- nity. He had all the requisites of a powerful preacher, in person, in manner, in tone, and in diction. His urbanity and his placidity of dispo- sition secured the esteem of all who approached him. He told me that his labors were then nearly brought to a close ; that for more than thirty years he had been confined to his study, an ordi- nary room ; that his diurnal labor was of many hours ; that, save his Sabbath preaching at the
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Old Jewry, his only exercise had been his limited walk daily to his publishers, the Longmans. His fair and lively skin, his bright eye and his whole- some appearance, with such a life of mental devo- tion and such confinement, put at nought all my theoretical doctrines on the laws of health. He must have been more than a teetotaller. I was informed he was the last of the Doddridge wig order, an imposing article, but which yielded in dimensions and artistic elaboration to the more formidable one which invested the brain-case of the great Hellenist, Dr. Samuel Parr, with its dis- tensive and seemingly patulous gyrations. To the curious in habiliments, I may add, that the wig of that right worthy, lately with us, Dr. Liv- ingston, was of the Doddridge order, that of old Dr. Rodgers, Samuel Parr's. Nor is it trifling to state the fact, for there was a time, according to Southey, when the wig was considered as necessa- ry for a learned head, as an ivy bush for an owl. You will pardon this digression on Rees' Cyclopæ- dia, inasmuch as it elucidates the point I would sustain, were this a fit occasion, that in the origin and spread of the Unitarian creed in this country, we are hardly justified to limit our attention to the movements of our Boston or Eastern friends. The well-known letter of Franklin to Stiles sup- ports this view, and we have seen that when occa- sion has prompted, its advocates rise up limited to
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no special locality. The community that can enumerate among its supporters such writers and scholars as Channing, Dewey, Osgood, Furness, and Bellows, need cherish no apprchension that their cause will fall through from a stultified indiffer- ence. But I find myself launching in deep waters, and will near the shore.
Enough and more than enough has been said of the workings of the principles of religious tol- eration among us ; they furnish instructive proofs of the freedom secured to the people by our admi- rable constitutional form of government ; the in- tellect knows it, the searcher after truth is sus- tained by it.
With a very brief notice of the Episcopalian denomination, I shall terminate these hasty sketch- es of religious matters. The Episcopalians of this metropolis have exercised a great influence on the interests of learning among New Yorkers, and on their institutions of public instruction and hu- manity. They have also proved warm friends to the New York Historical Society.
The disruption of the colonies from the Mother Country proved more disastrous in its immediate effects to the Protestant Episcopal Church than to that perhaps of any other religious association. The ties which bound her to the forms and cere- monials of the Church of England, were strong and numerous ; her ministers, with few excep-
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tions, favored the cause of the loyalists, and con- sequently in a large majority of instances were, upon the restoration of peace, compelled to aban- don their pastoral charges, and seek a livelihood elsewhere. This consequence, with the disasters of the times, resulted in a deserted ministry, and in a disabled and poverty-stricken religious com- munity. The conscientious Churchman, bewail- ing the state of affairs, and anxious for the future, looked forward with fluctuating hopes to the pe- riod when a happy issue might be found in the various deliberations which now occupied the minds of the friends of the Episcopate, not unlike those which agitated the patriots of the Revolu- tion amidst their discussions on the adoption of the Articles of Confederation by the old Congress. At length a convention was held in Philadelphia, which continued from the 27th of September to the 7th of October, 1785, and delegates appeared from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Dela- ware, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. Its labors brought forth the Protestant Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, proposed for the Protes- tant Episcopal Church, printed by Hall and Sel- lers, in 1786. This book, now rarely to be found, received the name of the Proposed Book. It was reprinted at London in 1789 ; it contained no Nicene Creed, or Athanasian Creed ; it had the Apostles' Creed, but omitted "he descended into
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hell." It had a special prayer for the then exist- ing government. It had a special supplication in the liturgy for the then Congress, and a form of service or prayer for the 4th of July.
The Convention was again held in Philadel- phia, in September, 1789, William White, Presi- dent, for the purpose of settling Articles of Union, discipline, uniformity of worship, and gen- eral government among all the churches in the United States. The Prayer Book was now so adjusted as to meet with great acceptance and with full approval. At the instance of the Eng- lish bishops, the passage " he descended into hell," was restored, with a proviso, that the words "he went into the place of departed spirits," might or might not be substituted. The Nicene Creed was restored; the prayers were made to conform to the now established government, for the President and all in civil authority. This Convention agreed to abolish the service for the 4th of July, but allowed each bishop the power of providing a suitable ser- vice for that and all other political occasions. In 1792, Bishop Provoost, who had been absent from indisposition at the former Convention, presided. The Church ordinal, for the ordination of deacons and priests, and the consecration of bishops, was agreed upon. It was printed by Hugh Gaine, in 1793. The articles of religion were agreed to in Convention in 1801, and have since that
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