USA > New York > The centennial history of the Protestant Episcopal church in the diocese of New York, 1785-1885 > Part 14
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The resignation of Bishop Provoost and the declining health of Bishop Moore created another critical state of
our young clergy might read them. He notes as the four elements of greatness (I) sagacity in foresight, (2) rapidity of movement, (3) concentration of effort, and (4) perseverance in purpose .- Prof. Years, p. 124.
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things in the feeble estate of Church life in New York. Dr. Hobart became coadjutor-bishop ; but the painful difficulties which arose out of all the circumstances are a chapter full of instructive warnings, as to various perils which may beset the Church, through human infirmity. Let us not revive the memory of those events, save to state the facts that the trials of the young bishop, at the outset of his career, were need- lessly multiplied, bravely encountered, and manfully over_ come. In four years after his consecration, the number of his clergy had been doubled; the missionary clergy had increased fourfold. Wholly devoted to his work, he went forth himself a missionary to the waste places of his diocese.
In the cause of education, Bishop Hobart was again a pioneer. Apart from what he did for the already endowed college in New York, to which I have only made a passing reference, he was the founder of the college at Geneva, of which I shall speak more particularly by-and-by. He was also, in fact, the real founder of the seminary in New York. In the General Convention of 1813 he opposed a premature effort to establish something of the kind by that body ; but it was simply because he considered it premature, and be- cause he felt the vast importance of New York, and that its influence should be predominant in the founding of the school. From New York he was sure the funds must be largely derived, and he was unwilling to forfeit a corresponding control. This principle he had contended for, in behalf of the Church and her interests in Columbia Col- lege ; and, as to the proposed seminary, he foresaw that the General Convention would be unable to direct its affairs with adequate care and oversight. In New York, only, the Church was strong enough to give it, from the start, a proper charac- ter and dignity ; and there almost exclusively was it possessed of a traditional order and conformity in its usages with those of the Mother Church, which could be trusted to educate the future clergy by mere contact and habituation into the princi- ples and the tone of Hooker and Taylor and Hammond. It was not for any personal ends that he maintained this idea. He felt that a seminary placed anywhere else, at that crisis,
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would render only a feeble and equivocal service to the com- mon good. In a few years this was recognized by the whole Church, and the munificence of the worthy son of the late Bishop Moore * enabled it to begin its career with an effi- ciency which soon began to be felt in every part of the land. The bishop himself accepted its chair of pastoral theology, and gave his personal labor gratuitously to its earliest alumni. With what inspiration he moved them to every high resolve and fired them with his own holy enthusiasm, I have heard eloquently described by the greatest of his pupils, the apos- tolic Whittingham. " For few of God's many blessings," he once said to me, " have I so much reason to be supremely grateful as for the day that brought me to sit at the feet of Hobart." Truly, the great man " lived in his issue," for like Clement after Pantænus at Alexandria, Whittingham suc- ceeded to a similar power and influence in the seminary, and many of our living clergy express themselves in the same manner when in turn they speak of him.
The college which now bears his name, at Geneva, grew out of the bishop's interest in the great missionary region of his diocese. In the days when railways were unknown and the Grand Canal itself was a mere projected scheme of improve- ment, the need of a local school for the rearing of the Church's children in the vast region of Western New York was more forcibly obvious than it could be considered now. He gave it existence, and had he lived longer, it cannot be doubted that a more vigorous life would have characterized its early history. It is worthy of remark that the Bishop's delight in natural scenery influenced his resolve that Geneva should be the site of the Western College. "And here it shall stand," he said, striking his staff into the turf, as he paused to survey the charming view of the lake which the college commands.+ He chose the very spot where it is now situated and where it is cherished as a monument of his life and name.
* My honored friend, Clement C. Moore, LL.D.
t The late T. C. Burwell, of Geneva, a man of venerable and marked character, gave me this incident from his personal recollection.
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The missionary enterprise of the Church received its earliest impulses from the example, as well as from the burning words, of Hobart. In Western New York the remnants of the Oneidas were yet comparatively vigorous in their decay, and the missions of the Church of England had brought a consid- erable portion of them into the communion of the Church. In 1815, the bishop provided them with a missionary, and the correspondence which passed between these people and their apostle in 1818, is one of the most touching and primi- tive records of such events in modern times. Soon after he made them a personal visit and confirmed eighty-nine souls, who had been well prepared for the solemnity by their cate- chist, whom he afterwards admitted to holy orders, and who was believed to be himself of Indian extraction .* When, in 1865, I visited this people, I found some still surviving on whom Hobart had laid hands. The eloquent chief spoke to his people in my behalf, welcoming a visit from a bishop who would be their friend; for, said he, "this Church has never deceived us, never injured us: she has been our helper for many moons, many years, and she will befriend us while grass grows and water runs." I was profoundly impressed by the surviving influence of the bishop's labors, and by the tender- ness with which they recalled his name. The mission at Green Bay, in the " far West," was soon after established, and the missionary was transferred, with many of his people, to what is now Wisconsin. To that distant field Bishop Hobart made an effort to follow them, by a per- sonal visitation, nor can it be doubted that he would have carried his purpose into effect had his life been spared. As it was, the "Green Bay Mission " was at that early day a Christian outpost which awakened the Church to the need of missionary efforts in the West, and kindled that interest in " Indian Missions" which has been made an honorable dis- tinction of the Church in America. I believe the Western- most limit of Bishop Hobart's apostolic journeyings was
* The Rev. Eleazar Williams, who was afterwards supposed to be the lost Dauphin of France, Louis XVII. This idea is said to have been accepted by Dr. Hawks.
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Detroit, in the wilderness of Michigan, where he laid the corner-stone of a church in 1817. The time for "Foreign Missions " was hardly yet reached in the work of a Church which was little more than a mission itself; and this convic- tion of the bishop led those who were hostile to his spirit to accuse him of a lack of interest in evangelizing the world. It need not be argued how unjustly this was said ; but, it may be urged with great force, that from his diocese went forth the foremost of our missionaries in the person of one of his own sons in the ministry, who lived to do that great work for the restoration of Greece to the purity of the Gospel, which is everywhere acknowledged to be one of the most useful and successful missionary operations of this century.
As a doctor and theologian it is the opinion of those who knew him best, that his influence was yet only begun when he was removed from the militant Church. Incessantly en- gaged in the practical duties of his apostolic office as well as in those which were parochial, one can only wonder how he found time for study, or for taking his natural rest. The lat- ter he often sacrificed to his self-imposed tasks. From his venerable relict I have heard the most tender expressions of regret that the bishop never thought of rest when anything was to be done. Said Mrs. Hobart : "The last words he said to me " (as he started on the visitation from which he was returned in the coffin) " were in reply to my remark- 'you are undertaking too much.' 'How can I do too much for Him who has done everything for me '-was his answer, as he turned away and left us to come back no more." To illus- trate the just remonstrance of Mrs. Hobart, he often rose long before day and lighted his own fire, to begin his day's work. It was by these exertions while others were sleeping, that the Church was indebted for the publication of an edition of D'Oyly and Mant's Family Bible. It was the earliest vent- ure of the press in this country to bring out a costly work, which could expect no support from any others than Church- men. It was undertaken at the instance of the bishop him- self who enriched it with original and selected annotations, and who gave it his personal attention and labor gratuitously,
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as an encouragement to the publishers in their bold venture on the Church's ability and good-will to sustain such an under- taking.
This was a defensive measure, however, as well as a labor to indoctrinate. The American Press already teemed with Calvinistic expositions and with books for family reading based on the Genevan theology. The publication of Scott's Family Bible, in a handsome form, found great popular favor, and as its author was a clergyman of the Church of England, great efforts were made to circulate it, on that ground, among professed Churchmen. But, it was saturated with Calvinistic ideas, modified indeed by the Church; and in England, in- fluenced, and rendered comparatively harmless, by the pre- dominance of the Church. Here, however, it was fuel to fire ; it helped on the prevalent sectarianism of the land and tended to dilute the principles of our own people. This was what Hobart could not behold with indifference. Who but he would have applied a remedy so costly to himself and from which nothing could accrue to his own credit as a divine ? Even the Church has forgotten that such exertions were ever made in her behalf ; but they left a deep mark on her grow- ing character and thus began the great enterprise of enlist- ing the capital of publishers in her work.
In the enjoyment of a great privilege to which he was ad- mitted after the bishop's death, the writer has often observed the nature of his studies and the habits of his mind, in turn- ing over the well-used volumes of his private library. The marginalia abound with frequent evidences of his interest, approval, or disapprobation. Frequent marks of his emphatic " N. B." show the discrimination with which he judged favor- ably of expressions or statements which none other than well- learned men would have noted at all. He was undoubtedly well versed in the teachings of Bull and Waterland, and through them was imbued with the spirit of the Fathers, many of whose writings were doubtless his familiar study. He was the first to give the Church in America the example of an " Episcopal charge," explaining it as a duty of his office. It is justly surmised, therefore, by those who knew him best,
II
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that had he lived to see three-score and ten his later years would have been fruitful in doctrinal charges, and of teach- ings in other forms, which would have left upon our theologi- cal learning as deep an impress as his other efforts have imparted to our growth in other ways.
On the death of Bishop Moore, he preached a sermon in which he expounded the faith as to the state of the departed between death and judgment. This he afterward published with additions by which it was expanded into a dissertation. When we reflect upon the feeble rubric with which our Amer- ican Prayer-book is disfigured to this day, as touching the Article of the Creed on " the Descent into Hades," we may well admit the claims of Hobart to be considered a doctor of our Church, inasmuch as by the publication of this sermon, the faithful were established in the truth, and the last traces of ignorance and feebleness in this part of a good confession were obliterated. It is not to be forgotten, that, while with consummate tact he forbore to startle the Church with private opinions that gender strifes, he has yet left on record and commended to private devotion a legitimate prayer for the faithful departed, such as the Church of England has never repudiated ; which, in fact, she has retained, ambiguously, in her Offices, though not more ambiguously than similar ideas are formulated in Holy Scripture.
The doctrine of our regeneration in baptism was also very imperfectly comprehended among our people, until Hobart made it prominent in his teaching and in manuals of devotion, by which it became familiar and was woven in with habits of piety in the minds of young confirmants and com- municants. More formal and dogmatic teachers have since been produced, but nobody can ever displace the primary claims of the bishop in this matter also. For it was he who taught the teachers and through them the people of a new generation, what are the elementary principles of the doctrine of Christ.
As to the Holy Eucharist, there can be no doubt that he shared with Seabury the views of the Scottish prelacy, if not those of the less discreet English Non-jurors. But, like Sea-
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bury, Bishop Hobart had learned of Him who "pleased not himself," and was ever ready to abate and to postpone in minor matters what time would take care of, provided the fundamentals were secured. Thus, to secure the faithful use of the " Ante-Communion," on all Sundays and festivals, as a recognition of the Eucharistic principle, he offered to concede to the " Low-Churchmen " of those days a rubrical abatement as to minor matters, in which they were wont to take liberties very scandalous even to Bishop White, who reproached them with a breach of vows. When we consider how low was the tone of churchmanship, everywhere, in the days of the Colo- nial Government, when the people were so insufficiently supplied with clergy, and wholly without bishops, we must remember that the miracle of revival was wrought by the very course which now excites our censure. Seabury stood out for the Oriental Liturgy, but did not press the " usages " (so called), and he conceded the disuse of the Athanasian Hymn, on grounds unquestionably Catholic. Moreover, he gave con- sent when an incongruous civil name was accepted by the American Church, yielding to the spirit of the American Con- stitution, on grounds of obedience to the magistrate. The amount of hatred thus allayed, and of good-will that was thus secured, can hardly be imagined in our days. But, in those days bitter feelings which the war had engendered toward England were added to the sectarian hatred of the " Estab- lished " Church and a long-cherished antipathy to bishops, as belonging to a peerage, as non-republicans, and as filled with star-chamber plots against liberty. The first duty was to dis- abuse a populace which had threatened to toss Bishop White into the river, on his arrival from England, and a laity so degenerate, in some places, that they were willing to accept an American episcopate, only on condition that no bishop should reside in their immediate vicinity.
Let us put ourselves back, then, into those times and re- member how plausible was the anticipation of Bishop Pro- voost that, with the old colonial families, the Church must die out. Bishop Hobart's struggle was to fortify the Church in root principles, aud to gain a parley with the outside world
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on the maxim, " Strike, but hear." He could not have fore- seen the immense success of his own policy, and such amaz- ing success must justify his course even where it seemed too conciliatory.
And this brings me to a point where, as I have promised, I must touch upon the secret of that decline of influence and prestige to which his great name has been temporarily sub- jected. The Church, to use the conversational language of one of our venerated president-bishops, has "caught more than she has been able to cure." Thousands have been brought into the Church whose antecedents were unfavorable to all just conceptions of her history, her true character, and her genuine doctrines. Such converts have been too often the subjects of violent reaction. New wine in unprepared vessels has caused them to burst. Violent changes in relig- ion generally tend to extremes, and the sobering and re- straining influences of the prayer-book have been conspicuous in nothing more emphatically than in the power it has exer- cised over thousands in checking their natural fanaticism and excess. Still it is true that multitudes have opened their eyes as upon Paradise, in emerging from a dreary Calvinism into her communion, and not content with crying, " It is good to be here," have been so inebriated with the new wine as to have made themselves examples of the truth, " therein is ex- cess." They have educated themselves into mere " æstheti- cism," and have fancied every caprice of taste and fancy to be genuine Churchmanship. Now, when the debased archi- tectural fashions of a former generation were reformed by our own, the general outcry was: "Whence came these three- decker abominations ;" and when the answer was that " Bishop Hobart introduced them"; "so much the worse for the bishop," was the rejoinder, and his reputation suffered loss. Thousands to whom the bishop was but a name, who knew nothing of his work, and who little suspected that they them- selves would never have found their way to the Church but for his concessions to his times, have learned to speak slight- ingly of him and to associate him with the " three-deckers," as if that were his only contribution to American Churchman-
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ship. It was, perhaps, his only ill-advised measure, and it was a missionary measure merely ; directed to a particular end, and guided by St. Paul's prudential maxim of becoming " all things to all men," to gain the more. Look at the facts :
All the churches in New York, as I recollect them from boyhood, and I think the same was essentially true of Phila- delphia, had the merit of a dignified arrangement of the altar and (nominal) chancel, by which the Eucharist was made the noblest feature of worship. Thus, the Trinity Church of that day had no " chancel " proper, but a grave and comely altar, under the great window, with ample railings, where the chil- dren were catechised, and where, of course, confirmation was administered and the Holy Communion received. But, all this was behind the pulpit, which stood on its graceful stem at the head of the mid-alley. Under it was the huge reading- desk, which, with the pulpit stairway, hid the altar effectu- ally from a large portion of the congregation. Strangers coming in and seating themselves near the doors could see nothing that went on in the chancel. Confirmations, ordina- tions, and other Episcopal offices were lost upon the people in a large measure. The bishop's sermon at Trenton, on " the Excellence of the Church," was little appreciated, so far as its liturgic expositions were concerned, because men could not see with their eyes "whether these things were so." The bishop devised a plan which would remedy this, and which had the merit, when the priest went to the Holy Table to be- gin the Ante-Communion, of making him visible at that all- important and noblest part of the ordinary morning service. In my admired and beloved old St. Paul's Chapel the clergy used to disappear at this crisis and give forth the Decalogue as a voice only ; from some of the best positions in the Church we could hear, but could not see them at all.
I remember the change made at St. John's Chapel, where the experiment was first tried. It caused a sensation. Chil- dren were delighted to see the clergyman enter the pulpit from a door in the wall, and others were glad to find the entire service such as they could see and hear and enjoy. The " splendors " of St. Thomas's, as they astonished Churchmen
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in 1826 with new conceptions of " Gothic," sealed the success of the new plan .* Of its kind, the lofty pulpit of that church was a superb bit of architectural effect, and the chancel ex- hibited the ministrations to the eye with delightful impres- sions. Almost immediately the design was copied ; but the bishop was then in Europe, and was not answerable for the furore that followed nor for the absurdities to which it led. In his own parish it was not introduced any further. Trinity Church and St. Paul's remained as they were aforetime, until after his decease. But because of this, the unexampled services of Hobart have been decried and the merest sciolists in Cath- olicity have talked him down as " good enough for his times," but an influence of the past. Again, I remark, that in all probability the single mistake was nevertheless the necessary precursor to all that has since been gained. It popularized the offices and ritual of the Church. Then it led to the study of the liturgic system and of antiquity ; thus, the temporary evil corrected itself and led us to restore, not what was the use of our colonial fathers, but rather " what was in the old time before them."
I must think that a wise Providence was guiding and di- recting the Church in that day, by a way that they knew not, to greater results than we ourselves, as yet, have faith to per- ceive. If ever our imported Romanism is to be reformed and our millions of population assimilated as Christians, I doubt not this American Church is the treasure-house of God's lov- ing designs for such great salvation. And, I believe, no less, that there was a time when He " fed us with milk and not with strong meat ;" and that He has always raised up those who were able to meet the wants of our progressive stages and to teach us, as did our Master himself, as men were " able to hear it." In this great process of divine preparation for the wonders yet to be seen, Bishop Hobart was raised up as a mighty instrumentality and a great gift of God to his countrymen.
* This Church was incorrect in composition and in details, but it led to great advances. It was the first suggestion of open-roofs (only partially exemplified), and it was strikingly beautiful as a whole. It was due to the Rev. Dr. McVickar.
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If it be not altogether true, as is sometimes said, that " the world knows nothing of its greatest men," it is certainly true that the world rarely recognizes its greatest benefactors. There can be little doubt that the elements infused into the religious life of Americans by the influences that went forth from the lives of Seabury and Hobart have revolutionized the popular mind upon questions innumerable, pertaining to doc- trine and duty, upon the minor morals, and even upon the Con- stitution of the State. In this last particular, less obviously indeed, but, as a mere instance, take the unpopular course of the American Church in the late war. Contributing most ef- ficiently the personal wealth, the valor, and the wise coun- sels of her sons to the national cause, she yet made herself the only religious corporation in America that maintained the constitutional principle of the entire separation of the Church from political issues, and hence became the strong- est bond between North and South, when the war was over. By the instantaneous reunion of her people in one national Communion, she illustrated the remark of Calhoun, that, even in his day, the religious estrangements of North and South had become as marked as other differences, save only in this Anglo-American Church. He recognized her, at that . date, as the only existing religious link between the popula- tions separated by " Mason and Dixon's Line."
With marvellous foresight, Bishop Hobart had maintained this great principle of our Constitution, when the Mayor of New York, very innocently, prescribed to the churches of the city a participation, quite proper in itself, in the solemnities attending the funeral of the great Governor Clinton. Nobody was more ready than he to honor Clinton, but he saw to what it must tend if the civic authorities were permitted to issue mandaments to his clergy. With equal intrepidity, when the Masonic Fraternity, at Detroit, came forth, with kindly intent, in their insignia, to assist at the laying of the corner- stone of a church, he declined the mingling of their ceremonies with the offices of the Church. It must have pained him deeply to appear ungrateful for what was intended in his honor, but all " entangling alliances " of the Church with the
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