USA > New York > The centennial history of the Protestant Episcopal church in the diocese of New York, 1785-1885 > Part 13
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tember, 1801, he was unanimously elected Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New York. He was so manifestly the man for the place that his election seemed to be spontaneous. A few days afterward, Septem- ber II, 1801, he was consecrated in St. Michael's Church, Trenton, New Jersey, by Bishop White, of Pennsylvania, Bishop Claggett, of Maryland, and Bishop Jarvis, of Connect- icut.
During his episcopate Bishop Moore remained rector of Trinity Church, the two positions in those days being ordi- narily held by the same person. Such an arrangement was the more practicable, because the confirmation visitations were so much fewer then than now. The list of parishes in the entire State of New York entitled to representation in the Convention of 1804, is as follows : in New York City, Trinity Church and its three chapels; Church du St. Esprit, St. Mark's, in the Bowery, and Christ Church ; and beyond New York city single parishes in the following places : New Rochelle, Catskill, Newtown and Flushing, Yonkers, Brook- lyn (St. Ann's), Hudson, Staten Island, Rye, Bedford, Al- bany, Poughkeepsie (Rev. Philander Chase, rector), Fishkill, Hempstead, New Stamford, East Chester, West Chester, beside stations in Orange and Otsego Counties. These par- ishes were served by 28 clergy.
The extent of the annual visitations is given by Bishop Moore himself. At the Diocesan Convention of 1808 he makes the following report: "Since the last meeting of the convention (exclusive of the four congregations which are more immediately committed to my pastoral care as rector of Trinity Church) I have visited the following churches for the purpose of administering the holy rite of confirmation : Christ Church, New York; St. Ann's, Brooklyn; St. An- drew's, Staten Island; Trinity Church, New Rochelle; St. Peter's, West Chester ; St. Paul's, East Chester ; St. Mark's, Bowery; St. John's, Yonkers. In the before-mentioned period of time, six hundred and ninety-two persons have been con- firmed. We have ten young gentlemen who have signified their intention of applying for admission into Holy Orders."
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In 1809, the bishop reports : " During the last year I have administered the holy rite of confirmation in the following churches : Grace Church, Jamaica ; St. James', Newtown ; St. George's, Flushing ; St. Michael's, Bloomingdale ; Trinity Church, New York; Christ Church, Hudson; St. Peter's, Al- bany; St. Paul's, Troy; Trinity Church, Lansingburgh ; St. George's, Schenectady ; Episcopal congregation in the Lu- theran Church, Athens; St. Luke's, Catskill. In the course of these visitations I have confirmed three hundred and four persons."
It will be observed that though these confirmations were occasional, the classes were large. The extent of the bishop's duties as rector may be inferred from the fact that in 1804 there were in Trinity parish 1,000 communicants, 115 mar- riages, 378 baptisms, and 400 funerals.
Bishop Moore's episcopate was marked by the steady growth of the diocese. Christ Church, New York city, was received into union with the convention in 1802, St. James', Goshen, in 1803, and the Church du St. Esprit was consecrated ; St. Paul's, Claverack and Warwick, was received in 1804, St. Stephens, New York City, and the Church at Athens, and Coxsackie in 1806, and St. Michael's, Bloomingdale, in 1807. The year 1810 was very fruitful. On the 18th of March a young man of excellent promise was ordained deacon in St. John's Chapel. His name was William Berrian. Who could say that he would not some day become rector of Trinity parish itself. On the 22d of March, Zion Lutheran Church, in Mott Street, conformed to our communion, and its pastor, Ralph Williston, was ordained on the following day. On the 17th of May the new St. James' Church, Hamilton Square, five miles distant from the city, among the country seats of prominent churchmen, was consecrated; also on the 9th of June, Trinity Church, Geneva ; July 8th, Christ Church, Cooperstown ; and October 17, St. Matthew's, Bedford.
During all these years of diocesan work the Rev. Mr. Hobart, of Trinity Church, afterward Bishop Hobart, was the active and most efficient helper of Bishop Moore ; and by his co-operation the Protestant Episcopal Theological So-
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ciety was established in 1806, and became the germ of the General Theological Seminary. The Bible and Common Prayer Book Society was also established in 1809.
In February, 1811, the bishop was attacked by paralysis, and called a special convention in May, for the purpose of electing an assistant bishop. Dr. Hobart was chosen, and after his consecration performed all the duties of the diocese. Bishop Moore withdrew into the sacred retirement of an in- valid, where his bearing is said to have been saintly ; and he fell asleep on the 27th of February, 1816, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.
During his episcopate a question arose with regard to his jurisdiction, but it was one into which he did not enter, and it does not form a part of his history.
Bishop Hobart preached his funeral sermon, in which he said : " He lives in the memory of his virtues. He was un- affected in his temper, in his actions, in his every look and gesture. Simplicity, which throws such a charm over talents, such a lustre over station, and even a celestial loveliness over piety itself, gave its coloring to the talents, the station, and the piety of our venerable father.
" People of the congregation ! you have not for- gotten that voice of sweetness and melody, yet of gravity and solemnity with which he excited while he chastened your devotion ; nor that evangelical eloquence, gentle as the dew of Hermon."
Bonuluis R. Smith.
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THE THIRD BISHOP OF NEW YORK.
JOHN HENRY HOBART, who became the third bishop of New York, was born in Philadelphia, September 14, 1775. He was thus, at his birth, a subject of the British Crown. His father's family was a highly respectable one in our colo- nial history, having been established in America since 1635. He was blest with a Christian parentage, and, as has often been the case with the brightest ornaments of the Church, he owed much to the piety and tenderness of a mother, upon whom, as a widow, was thrown the chief care and nurture of his boyhood. She was able to afford him a lib- eral education, and he was graduated B.A. at Princeton, in 1793. On the 3d of June, 1798, in his twenty-third year, he was admitted to the diaconate, by Bishop White. Af- ter brief engagements near Philadelphia, and afterwards at Hempstead, Long Island, he became an assistant minis- ter of Trinity Church, in New York, in September, 1800, while yet in deacon's orders ; and he was ordained to the presbyterate, in that church, by Bishop Provoost, in April, 1801. The precise date of this ordination is not recorded. JAHobart. It may surprise us to find that be- fore this event he was Secretary to the House of Bishops, his election to that honorable duty taking place on the anniversary of his admission to Holy Orders. In 1801 he was made Secretary of the Diocesan Convention of New York; and, also, a deputy to the General Convention, which met in Trenton that year. He was also a deputy to the Convention of 1804, which met in New York, and was made Secretary of the House of Deputies. He received the degree of D.D. from Union College, in 1806. On the 29th of May, 1811, he was consecrated bishop-coadjutor to Bishop Moore, in Trinity Church, New York; and on the 27th of February, 1816, he succeeded to the jurisdiction, on the decease of his predeces-
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JOHN HENRY HOBART, D.D.
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sor. He was also elected rector of Trinity Church, to suc- ceed Bishop Moore. His episcopal cure was extended to New Jersey, till it received a bishop, in 1815, and from 1816 to 1819 he had provisional charge of the Diocese of Connec- ticut. On the 10th of September, 1830, he closed a laborious life and a career of distinguished usefulness, while visiting the Western district of his diocese. He fell asleep at Auburn, in the rectory of St. Peter's Church, and was buried in the chan- cel of Trinity Church, New York, on the 16th of September, Dr. Onderdonk officiating and preaching the funeral sermon.
Such is the outline of a life which has left a deep impres- sion on the Catholic Church of America. The details of his biography are profusely recorded in historical and popular works, and need not be repeated here. The space accorded to his memoir in these pages may better be devoted to a brief review of his character and his work.
The epoch-making bishops of our brief history are, of course, few. Nobody doubts, however, that of these Hobart was one. Circumstances to which I will direct attention, by and by, have led to a temporary neglect of his name and in- fluence, and thousands who have entered the Church from other communions are so uninstructed in her antecedents, and undisciplined by her historical traditions, that his mem- ory, like that of Seabury and Ravenscroft, is preserved in books almost exclusively, and lives not as it should in the hearts of men. It is a momentary evil, however, for he was one of those elect spirits whose labors are imperishable in their effects, and must revive, from time to time, asserting their full value in living issues, and so recalling his influence, and elevating it into authority.
Look, then, at the epoch which Hobart created. He res- cued the Church from a fossilized position in this country ; brought in into contact with the actual life and thought of his day, and lifted it into the sphere of commanding dignity, where, under his moulding and directing hand, it became a power in the nation. Few seem to have given due attention to these facts ; let me briefly illustrate them.
Not till I had lived to see the hundredth anniversary of
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American Independence did it occur to me how nearly my own life and recollections had touched upon the period and the men of the Revolution. Not to speak of the venerable worthies to whose conversations I listened, as a child, when they related their own share in its political or military affairs,* I now feel as I did not previously, how really the Church, as I first knew it in New York, was yet the " Church of Eng- land," the name by which it was frequently spoken of in pop- ular usage. It was not till A.D. 1817, that Bishop Hobart buried Dr. Bowden, the last of those clergy who had belonged to the colonial days, and were ordained in England. Bishop Provoost himself had died only two years before, and Bishop White, outliving Bishop Hobart himself, survived till 1833, the grand patriarchal figure in whom the colonial period pro- tracted its influence, and was kept before men's minds to a date comparatively recent.
In New York, more than elsewhere, however, the Church retained the traditions of its history, so long as Bishop Ho- bart lived. Trinity Church itself was a "royal foundation," and the other churches in the city (and, to a large extent, in the country) were but branches of that banyan-like old trunk. During the war the royal troops generally held the city, and it was considered a strong-hold of Tories. I can recollect the old-fashioned men and dames whose costume was in some par- ticulars that of Washington's " court." Powdered hair and the queue had not entirely disappeared from men ; and short clothes with shoe buckles were by no means uncommon. Bishop Moore, of Virginia, and also Bishop Griswold retained this grave and dignified attire to the last. The old traditional Church families of New York were the leaders of society, and in many ways they reflected the colonial manners and modes of thought. I recollect one modest and unassuming, but truly grand old dame, who lived till past A.D. 1840, and who never ceased to celebrate "the old King's birth-day" by a family feast. She was not untrue to the National Republic,
* e. g. I remember a conversation of Governor Morgan Lewis with my father, in which he referred to the inauguration of Washington as first President and mentioned his command of the soldiery on that occasion.
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but she kept up, with tender fidelity to parental training, the feelings of her childhood and the traditions of her family. Now, the Church usages and traditions of the past lived on in Trinity parish in the same way, so long as these represen- tatives of the Province survived .*
At the time of Hobart's consecration the Church was at a low ebb of vitality, though perhaps not at the lowest. The old clergy were dying out ; few had come forward to take their places ; in the country at large the Church was little known, and generally looked upon as antiquated, effete, and ready to perish. In Virginia Chief Justice Marshall was astonished, in A.D., 181I, to hear of a young man who proposed to enter its ministry ; he had supposed it dead and buried. The con- fiscation of the glebe lands had indeed been an apparent death-blow to the church in the Old Dominion. Everywhere " her enemies were chief." The colleges, the press, the pre- dominating influence among the people, were in the posses- sion of the Presbyterians and Independents. So low was the popular prestige of the Church, even in the city of New York, that Dr. Mason had been able to grasp the presidency of Columbia College, and not only so, for he dictated his own terms, entered upon his task as a reformer, and humbled the Church so low as to force upon the trustees of the college an evasion of their own laws. As he could not legally be made " president," he was invested with the same office, under the fiction of " Provostship." Let us not marvel that Bishop Provoost's conviction was understood to be that the Church was incapable of flourishing under the new conditions, and that it was destined to dwindle away, and hardly to survive the hereditary instincts of another generation in the old colonial families. In 1813, when, for the first time, Bishop Hobart, though still a coadjutor-bishop, found himself invested with the entire responsibilities and Episcopal power of the diocese, he acknowledged himself cheered by the extraordinary fact that three young men of promise and high social position
* The solemnity with which they observed Good Friday is well portrayed (strange to say) by Mrs. Stowe, describing the manner of old church-folk in Mas- sachusetts. See Oldtown Folk.
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had offered themselves as candidates for Holy Orders. In 1818 he exulted in an increase of candidates very large for those days; and from that year must be dated, as the late Bishop Burgess has shown, the upgrowth of the American Church. All that we see of progress is, in fact, the develop- ment of less than three-score-years-and-ten. If we accept the date of Hobart's death, A.D. 1830, as the starting point of our whole visible and acknowledged gain upon the thought and progressive conformity of our countrymen, we shall be just to historic facts. Bishop Hobart himself never saw the full success, even in promise, of those elements of organic in- crease, of which it was his life-work to be, in large measure, the creator.
The press, as I have said, was in the hands of the popular denominations. Of our standard authors nothing could be had save by the expensive and tardy process of importation. But as early as 1803 Hobart began to move the Church and to awaken the attention of those without, by his didactic treatises. From his twenty-eighth year to his thirty-second his pen was constantly at work. He produced in quick suc- cession his essay on The Nature and Constitution of the Christian Church, his Companion for the Altar, the Com- panion for the Festivals and Fasts, The Church Catechism, prepared for Sunday School Instruction, and The Companion for the Book of Common Prayer. The Clergyman's Com- panion, a most useful hand-book of pastoral theology, belongs also to this catalogue, the very titles of which sufficiently in- dicate the bent of his mind and the school of his divinity.
While these publications provided the clergy with valu- able aids, and attracted the attention of sectarians, who were surprised to find the press actively worked for such ends, their blessed fruits were more happily realized in the new and zealous spirit they began to impart to the laity. Dr. McVickar argued, very clearly, that one of the earliest and noblest fruits of Dr. Hobart's ministry was this regeneration of the lay element in the Church. Under the old establish- mentarian ideas many had too contentedly been " hangers-on " of her ordinances, who now became her sons and devoted ser-
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vants, in the love of Christ and " the brethren." From that day forth, like the house of Rechab, the Church has not wanted sons to stand before the Lord and before the world, like the faithful Laity of Carthage in the days of Cyprian.
In his pastoral labors he was a devoted Catechist, and with a due sense of the importance of training the future clergy and people of the Church in the knowledge and love of her ordinances, he thus laid broad and deep the foundations of a lasting prosperity. As a preacher he was earnest and impressive, and was regarded as eloquent, but Dr. McVickar is candid in his criticisms, and acknowledges that his thorough devotion to his task of explaining and enforcing truth ren- dered him too little careful in the cultivation of style. What surprised the congregation of those days, he preached habit- ually without manuscript, and some hardly knew what to make of one who sometimes preached " like a Methodist," while yet he insisted on the authority and claims of the Church, with an emphasis unexampled previously. The writer of this memoir remembers his extemporary lectures on week days in St. John's Chapel, but never saw him in the pulpit without a manuscript. He was all fervor and action. Of course, my recollections are those of a child, but I recall my frequent remark, that I lost some of his words, owing to his rapidity of speech, and his occasional chewing of a syllable in utterance. But his biographer's remarks were probably not wholly applicable to his pulpit work after he became a bishop, the period when I first saw and heard him. The tributes to his power and unction as a preacher which have been pre- served, however, are of no ordinary character, and coming from men of great eminence in different positions, as clergy or laymen, they make it indisputable that his eloquence was that of genuine earnestness and persuasiveness, negligent, indeed, of artificial forms and adornments, but penetrating to the consciences and the hearts of the hearers, and directing their souls to the Saviour of sinners as their only refuge.
From his thirtieth to his thirty-fifth year Dr. Hobart sus- tained, with an unwilling, but not the less intrepid champion- ship, the part of a controvertist. Some of his publications
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were attacked with great bitterness by the sectarian press, and he was forced to stand upon the defensive. He became engaged in a memorable discussion with that Goliath of Cal- vinism, the learned and vigorous Dr. Mason, against whom he seemed matched like the youthful David in his contest with the towering Philistine, most unequally, like a mere boy with a man of war from his youth. The gifts and powerful intel- lectual endowments of Dr. Mason were, indeed, remarka- ble, and the bitter sarcasms with which he met his some- what diminutive antagonist justify the impression that he expected an easy victory, and disdained the youth whose te- merity he supposed must ensure defeat. But widely different was the result. The controversy awakened attention through- out the whole country. A storm of indignation was indeed awakened against the young divine who had ventured to pro- claim, in republican America, such doctrines as might plaus- ibly be represented as worthy only of the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts; and, what was worse, the timid and the prudent, as well as the politic, in his own communion, were not prepared to approve of his course or to acknowledge his positions to be those of the Church herself. But he stood upon the ground of Scripture, and claimed it in support of his chosen position-" Evangelical truth with Apostolical Order." Enough, that the results justified his courageous and faithful soldiership. From that day to this, the principles for which he contended have never been suffered to escape from the attention of American Christians ; they have been thoroughly examined and discussed, with the inevitable con- sequence-the vast increase of the Church's numbers, and the yet greater and wider diffusion of her influence among intelligent and earnest Christians. And well may the clergy of this day rejoice that what had to be done at first in the distasteful form of controversy was done once for all, and well done, so that we may "let it alone forever." Since then there have been discussions, indeed, but it has not been necessary to maintain an acrimonious conflict, because the Church's position and principles are known and identified, and can never again be treated as if they were but offensive and
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arrogant ideas of an individual. They may be resisted, but they are treated with respect. If the memorable debates of Dr. Barnes with Bishop Onderdonk, and those of Dr. Potts with Dr. Wainwright (subsequently Provisional Bishop of New York) were characterized by mutual courtesies and re- spectful concessions of just regard for the claims of an oppo- nent, we owe this improved state of things, in large measure, to what Dr. Hobart was forced to do and to endure, in the days of Dr. Mason, whose tactics were so largely those of an overbearing antagonist, determined to assert a victory from the start by the display of gigantic powers and a faculty of scorn that will hardly condescend to reason. In spite of admirable qualities and a commanding eloquence, such I sup- pose to have been the defects of Dr. Mason in dealing with those who were bold enough to reject his dogmatic supremacy.
But it was not only in the field of religious discussion that the youthful Hobart was obliged to meet this man of war. The humiliating condition to which Columbia College was reduced at this time, and the preponderating power of Dr. Mason, in the corporation, have been alluded to. No need to revive the painful history ; but, great is the debt which that noble foundation will ever owe to the mastery with which Dr. Hobart asserted the claims of the Church to manage the en- dowments she had created. At this crisis one is reminded of the lines of Sir Walter Scott, in thinking of Dr. Mason :
" While less expert, though stronger far, The Gael maintained unequal war."
Judge Livingston, though by his religious alliances more naturally leaning to the great Presbyterian divine, said of his young opponent : " Mr. Hobart, if not now, will soon (believe me) be more than a match for Dr. Mason. He has all the talents of a leader; he is the most parliamentary speaker I ever met with ; he is equally prompt, logical, and practical. I never yet saw that man thrown off his centre." Growing more emphatic, he replied to a rejoinder thus: "Sir, you underrate that young man's talents ; nature has fitted him for a leader .* Had he studied law he would have been upon the
* Dr. McVickar's comments upon this anecdote are very admirable. Would all
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bench; in the army, a major-general at the least, and in the State nothing under prime-minister."
The Church's first need, at this time, was adequate pro- vision for a learned clergy. Going to the English univer- sities was no longer to be thought of. The theological semi- naries of the country were all creations of the divers popular forms of sectarianism. The patient and successful efforts of Hobart to establish the General Seminary form a chapter in our history of the greatest interest, and constitute one of his strongest claims on our lasting gratitude. In like manner, we owe to him the " Bible and Common Prayer Book Society," established in 1809, preceding the " Ameri- can Bible Society " by seven years. In defence of this cherished institution, to which the Church is indebted for her first lessons in one great department of missionary work, Dr. Hobart was subsequently forced to appear, once more, as a champion. Again, we are indebted to him for found- ing and sustaining the Churchman's Magazine, perhaps the most important of our early efforts to maintain a periodi- cal of this class, devoted to church matters. In 1810, at the consecration of Trinity Church, Newark, his sermon on "The Excellence of the Church " contained an assertion of the most evangelical principles, but such a repudiation of the prevailing Calvinistic ideas then generally associated with " the doctrines of grace," has aroused no small opposition. In Dr. Mason's organ, the Christian Magazine, it was bitterly attacked. But hardly excepting what is said of the Liturgy, the same sermon, in our days, would hardly stimulate oppo- sition if preached from a Presbyterian pulpit. So great has been the change with respect to the tenets of Calvin, and so general the acquiescence of learned Presbyterian divines, in the truths of which the impact upon inveterate prejudice now began to be felt.
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