USA > New York > The diocese of Western New York : a history and recollections > Part 25
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The Bishop-Coadjutor (who was called " Assistant Bishop" in those days) began his work in the Diocese on the Sunday after his consecration, Jan. 8, in S. Peter's, Auburn, where Bishop Hobart had laid down his life, and Bishop De Lancey had been consecrated.f And it is noteworthy that his first service was given to the convicts in the State Prison at Auburn. 3 He made a rapid visitation during the remaining three weeks of January, visiting some thirty parishes, and con-
* Calling at Bishop De Lancey's late on the eve of the Consecration, I found all the Bishops there arranging details, among other things the "Sentence of Consecration" to be signed by them, which Dr. Hobart, the Registrar, had brought written on a foolscap sheet. Bishop Odenheimer insisted that that would not do, it must be properly engrossed on parchment; and two hours later Dr. Hobart called on me with a sheet of parchment which he had somehow obtained, and a request to have it "engrossed " and ready for the signatures early in the morning ! I complied,-not very willingly, I fear,-and finished the work by sitting up most of the night, with the result that I was barely able to take my part in the service the next day, and had to go to bed before it was over; and after all, the parchment was not signed in full till weeks afterward, having been placed in the hands of the Rev. Henry Darby, a most accomplished artist, to have illuminated capitals added. I believe that Bishop De Lancey's signature was finally obtained only a few days before he died .- To finish these personal reminiscences,-I had, unfortunately, a somewhat conspicuous place on one side of the chancel, and I learned afterwards that my illness and leaving the church was supposed to be because I could not endure the music !
t And where he himself had been a worshipper at eighteen. See Chap. XLV.
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firming 526 persons ; ending with the Institution on Jan. 31, of the Rev. Dr. Edwin M. Van Deusen as Rector of Grace Church, Utica, at which his extempore sermon was one of extraordinary fervour and eloquence, and long remembered by those who heard it, among whom were eighteen of the clergy of the Diocese. Thence he re- turned to New York to close his parochial relations with his beloved people of Calvary Church, and to complete an effort he had been mak- ing for the endowment of a Professorship in the General Theological Seminary.
From these duties he was recalled early in April by the last ill- ness and death of Bishop De Lancey.
Although unable even to leave his house for more than a short distance, the Bishop kept up his Diocesan work at home to the last, especially in correspondence, in which he was always a model of punctuality, writing some 300 letters in the last quarter of 1864. Contrary to every one's expectation, he recovered some strength after the fatigue and excitement of the Consecration, and on the 19th and 26th of March was able to attend the service at the College Chapel, a few doors from his house. The next Sunday, April 2, as he was about ready to go to the Chapel again, he suddenly lost his speech for a time, which kept him from going out ; but he regained it again, and at noon received the Holy Communion with his family, from the Rev. Dr. Bissell. The next day he was able to call on his sister. across the street, and seemed unusually well till Tuesday evening. when a series of violent spasms of the heart rendered him uncon- scious till near midnight. Again he rallied, and recognized the mem- bers of his family and the clergymen present (Drs. Bissell, Jackson and Rankine, and Professor Russell), and his physicians (Drs. East- man and Dox). Some tea was offered him, which he declined, but said, " give Mother some," showing to the last that tender care for Mrs. De Lancey which was always so noticeable in his home-life. These were his last words save the half-articulated but earnest " Amen" to the Commendatory Prayers. He died at three minutes past six on Wednesday morning, April 5, 1865, four days before Palm Sunday.
The Burial Service was said at Geneva on Tuesday in Holy Week. The Bishop's body was taken to the College Chapel near by, and seen there in the morning for the last time by hundreds of sorrowing
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people. At noon it was taken back to the house, and thence borne on men's shoulders to Trinity Church, a quarter of a mile away, pre- ceded by the Faculty and Students of Hobart College, the Wardens and Vestrymen of Trinity Church, the officiating Clergy and bearers,* and followed by the Pall-bearers, t the Family, Physicians, Clergy in order of age, and citizens. There were no carriages, and the proces- sion was one of touching and impressive simplicity. The only Bishop present was the new Diocesan, who took only the part of a mourner.
At the church the Clergy bore the body into the chancel, where the Burial Service was said by Drs. Bissell, Metcalf, Ingersoll, Jack- son and Bolles. The first part of the Anthem, "Lord, let me know mine end," the Sentence "I heard a voice from Heaven," and two metrical Psalms# were sung. An address was delivered by the Rev. Dr. 'Van Ingen, who had lately returned to the Diocese from his missionary work in Minnesota and his three years' chaplaincy in the Army. He was from first to last one of the Bishop's most devoted and congenial friends, and certainly no one could have been better qualified to speak of him at such a time,-if anyone was. He pict- ured the Bishop's character and life with true and eloquent words, but it was an occasion, it seemed to me, where no words could be adequate. §
On the evening of the same day, the Bishop's remains were taken to New York, watched one night in Calvary Church by students of the General Theological Seminary, from the Diocese, and on Friday were interred in the Burial ground of the De Lancey family at " Heathcote
Drs. Rankine, Foote, Schuyler, Gibson and Coxe, and Messrs. Ayrault, Matson and Platt.
t Drs. Ingersoll, Jackson, Bolles, Van Rensselaer, Beach and Hull. # Selection from Ps. XVI. "Therefore my heart all grief defies, My glory shall rejoice ; My flesh shall rest, in hope to rise, Waked by His powerful voice."
And from Ps. XI.
"In full assemblies I have told Thy truth and righteousness at large ;
Nor did, Thou know'st, my lips withhold From uttering what Thou gav'st in charge."
§ The Address is given in full in the Memoir of Dr. Van Ingen, " largely from his own writings," (Rochester, 1878, ) p. 105. With it may be compared the no less eloquent and truthful Sermon of Bishop Coxe at the next Annual Conven- tion. (Journ. 1865, p. 205.)
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Hill," Mamaroneck, Westchester county. There they remain to this day, though efforts have more than once been made by the Diocese to obtain the consent of the family to have them removed to the con- secrated ground of Trinity Church, Geneva, where his successor now rests .*
In the Journal of 1865, App. VII., p. 182, (from which the above account is taken in part,) will be found the Pastoral Letter of Bishop Coxe, the Resolutions of the Clergy attending the funeral, and of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of New York, and a mention of other tributes of respect, together with a brief sketch of the Bishop's life. It seems hardly necessary to repeat them here.
And still less need does there seem to be of attempting, what to me would seem a hopeless task, to give a resumé of Bishop De Lan- cey's character, which in fact has been set forth, as far as I could do it, through some two hundred pages back ; if they do not tell what he was as a MAN and a BISHOP, it cannot be told here. I can think of one feature only in which I have not depicted him; that is his GENTLENESS-his courtesy, not of manner only but of the heart-shown alike to every one, the stranger, the poor, the sick, the merest child who had no claim on him except that he was a child. May I tell another story of myself ? I came to know the Bishop for the first time one Sunday in the earliest years of his Episcopate (1843), when, an enthusiastic Church-boy, I had gone on foot to a little village near Canandaigua to " hear him preach." Thence at noon I set out to walk to the next village (East Bloomfield), where he was to confirm in the afternoon ; but on the way I was overtaken, to my intense delight, by the carriage of the Missionary (Tapping Reeve Chipman) containing the Bishop. As Mr. Chipman was a family friend, I was lifted into the carriage (by the Bishop's own hands ! and with a smile and words of welcome I never forgot), and for the next hour had the happiness of listening to his delightful talk with the clergyman and his wife. I remember much of it to this day. Finally I sat by his side at the tea-table (in the house, as it happened, of a relative), and
# The Rev. Drs. Rankine and Van Rensselaer attended the burial at Mama- roneck. The grave is in " the western part of the Heathcote Hill farm, the second tier in the S. W. part. The Bishop rests at his father's feet and by the side of his son." Mrs. DeLancey is buried by his side. She survived the Bishop only four years, dying March 30, 1869.
S. MARK'S CHURCH, NEWARK
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THE MODEL DIOCESE
again marked, as even a child could not fail to, his perfect courtesy and kindness to every one near him. I had many acts of special personal kindness from him to remember in later years, but none that ever took the place of that first glimpse of him through a child's eyes.
This gracious courtesy of manner, which every one felt was a part of his personality, inseparable from the man himself, had no doubt much influence in evoking that spirit of personal loyalty towards the Bishop which was such a remarkable characteristic of both clergy and laity in the old Western New York. But, beyond all that, and much more potent, was the feeling that he was a born leader of men, in whose judgment as well as sincerity there was, ordinarily, absolute confidence. It used to be said of him that " he was sure to do the right thing at the right time and in the right place." There were of course those (not many in the Diocese) who differed widely from him in theology or ecclesiastical polity,-those who thought him "slow," and those who thought him severe. But every one recognized the fact that his judgment on any point was pretty sure to be accepted heartily as the judgment of the Diocese, and also, generally speak- ing, as the judgment of common sense,-however it might contravene their own opinions or wishes. Thus the Western New York of his day came to be called "The Model Diocese," not even so much for the admirable system and order which his administration induced in all its affairs, parochial as well as diocesan, as for the absolute unity with the Bishop which, with very few exceptions, was plainly visible in all its work, and which, it must be said, gradually faded out of sight when his overseership came to an end. Under his more brilliant and equally devoted, unselfish and gracious successor, deeply loved as he was by so many in his day, the Diocese advanced by paths and to heights where Bishop De Lancey, the man of a past time, could never have led it; but it lost that perfect confidence and unity of purpose between Bishop and Priest and layman which had made it " The Model Diocese."
I have said elsewhere that in theological views Bishop De Lancey inherited, and curiously united, the traditions of two different schools, those represented in his younger days by Bishop White and Bishop Hobart. These schools were not in fact so different as they have been usually thought to be, and not at all opposed as they have some-
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times been represented for party purposes. It would not be difficult, indeed, to draw out a parallel which would make them appear nearly identical. As to Bishop De Lancey, the many extracts I have given from his writings show plainly, (what no one who knew him person- ally could doubt for a moment,) that on the Divine Constitution of the Church, and its Ministry, Sacraments and Worship, he was thoroughly the disciple of Bishop Hobart in all that positive and uncompromising teaching which revolutionized the ecclesiastical tone of the Church in the State of New York. But he had not only a ten- der regard for the memory and the teaching of Bishop White (whom he always quoted rather than any other authority), but in some things, certainly,a preference for his statements and mode of thinking in theo- logy. For instance, on the sacrificial character of the Holy Eucharist, where the views of White and Hobart, though quite capable of being reconciled, are widely different in tone, Bishop De Lancey, it seems to me, held rather with the former. There is no question that White and De Lancey accepted the teaching of Hooker on the Incar- nation and the Sacraments as fully as did Seabury and Hobart. But the two latter, had they lived in our day, would undoubtedly have gone on far in the path of the Oxford revival of Church principles, which received its first impulse in England from the intimate intercourse of Bishop Hobart with Hugh James Rose in 1824-5. In other words, they would have stood with the earlier Non-Jurors. I do not think that Bishop De Lancey would, although in many things he was far in advance of Bishop White. It is a remarkable fact that while his Diocese advanced greatly under his leadership in worship as well as in teaching, there is not an instance on record during the twenty-seven years of his Episcopate of actual contest over those questions of ritual which in so many places,-and in his day far more than now,-proved firebrands for foxes and sheep alike. The unity of his Diocese in this as well as other respects was, it seems to me, a far greater triumph of his wise and loving guidance than was its actual advance in Church principles.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
BISHOP COXE AT WORK
ISHOP Coxe began his work as Diocesan on Saturday, April 29, 1865, by the Consecration of Christ Church, Oswego, followed the next week (May 4) by that of S. Paul's, Waterloo. In both cases the consecration was accompanied by the Institution of the Rector ; the Rev. Dr. Amos B. Beach for Oswego, and the Rev. Robert N. Parke for Waterloo. I have already noted the Institu- tion of the Rev. Dr. Edwin M. Van Deusen, as Rector of Grace Church, Utica. Two years later, June 8, 1867, the office was used once more, for the Rev. William Paret, in Trinity Church, Elmira ; and this, thirty-six years ago, was the last instance of its use which I have found in the Episcopate of Bishop Coxe.
From this beginning the Bishop's visitations were almost continu- ous, and at the Annual Convention in August he was able to report that he had visited 80 parishes and missions in twenty of the 29 counties of the Diocese, confirmed 1183 persons, and consecrated six churches. (The Confirmations for the year, including those by the Bishops of New Jersey and Michigan, numbered 1, 582.) " Much that had been done in catechising, college and school visiting, mission- ary preaching, and the like," he does not report. " Yet I own," he adds in this first Address, " that I am not satisfied with such perfunc- tory Episcopizing. It is vain to attempt the realization of a primi- tive and scriptural work as the angelus of a Church so vast in extent as our Diocese ; but I shall labour on, by God's help, as well as I can, until you, my brethren, may think it your duty to secure to your- selves more abundant fruits of the Episcopate by providing for the erection of at least one more See among the three half-million souls and the more than twenty thousand square miles of Western New York." He had already, in his sermon at the same Convention in memory of Bishop De Lancey, declared that " the time is not far dis- tant when we must become two bands." In these utterances to his First Council he struck the keynote of those earnest and persistent councils to his Diocese which resulted three years later in the actual founding of a new See.
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Bishop Coxe was received everywhere in his Diocese, not only with the hearty and loyal welcome which Bishop De Lancey's Episcopate had prepared for his successor, but with the most enthusiastic admi- ration of his personal character, his very presence and manner, and most of all his wonderful power as a preacher. This enthusiasm cul- minated, so to speak, in his reception in Buffalo, which he had some time before fixed upon for his residence, with the approval of Bishop De Lancey. The Churchmen of that place had already promised $1,000 for house-rent in addition to the salary and expenses of removal provided by the Diocese, and begun a subscription of $20,000 for the purchase of a house. A special service of welcome was held on the evening of Sunday, May 14, in S. Paul's Church, attended by nearly all the clergy of the city and vicinity, and an immense congre- gation, who lifted up their voices in grand chorus in the familiar hymns, and listened with breathless interest for nearly an hour to the Bishop's fervent words, of thanks for the privilege of coming to live among them, on the great principle of " a Bishop in every city, as the normal condition of Church life," and on the manifold opportunities for the Church's work in such a centre as Buffalo was now becoming .*
The subscription for the Bishop's house was completed in the course of the summer, and about the first of October he began his residence in what he named from that time "the See House," No. 314 Del- aware Avenue. There was a considerable difference of opinion among Buffalo Churchmen, according to my recollection, both as to
* This is from my own diary, as I was present at the service, and the reports of it even in the Gospel Messenger are very imperfect. The "address of welcome " by Dr. Thomas C. Pitkin, of S. Paul's, to which the Bishop replied as above, is given in full in the Messenger of June 8, 1865, and is worth reading. " There is noth- ing here," he says, "to prevent a hearty, cordial, earnest co-operation of all the clergymen and laymen of our Church in any common work of Christian enter- prise. This show of unity is real. . There are no diversities of doctrine, of discipline or worship to hinder the most perfect and harmonious action. We are singularly free from causes of disturbance arising from opposing theories of Chris- tian truth or of Church polity. I know of no city, and I believe there is no city in the land of corresponding size, that is like the city of Buffalo in this respect.
But it is also true that the Churchmen of this city never have united in their work. The churches have been isolated ; we have never known by experience the strength there is in union. I trust it will be the happy privilege of our Bishop to give us this experience." He closes with an eloquent tribute to Bishop De Lancey. (Dr. Shelton, who would naturally have been the one to welcome the Bishop, was at this time in Palestine.)
ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE 1850
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THE SEE HOUSE
the location of the house, and its fitness for a Bishop's residence. The first objection, that it was "too far out of the way," has long since been removed by the growth of the city beyond it ; the second, that it was wanting in space and dignity-being only half a double house-remains in increasing force, the Bishop himself declaring to his Council in 1892 that "it was not such as should be provided by the Diocese for its Bishop," and, while for himself he was content to close his days under its roof, "the Diocese owed something to itself, and its Bishop should have an official homestead adapted to his office. There should be a few pleasant rooms for hospitalities to visiting Clergy. There should be a wing or side office for the Library, and this should be so arranged that visiting Clergy and students might use it freely. There should be a chapel where the Bishop with the Clergy could freely meet for devotion." In other respects, he thinks, the house is sufficient for " a plain and primitive Bishop, in a republi- can state of society."*
At the meeting of the Clergy of the Diocese at Bishop De Lancey's funeral, a Committee was appointed to confer with the Standing Com- mittee " in reference to erecting some enduring memorial of Bishop De Lancey." This joint Committee unanimously agreed that in consideration of the Bishop's labours in the establishment and main- tenance of S. Peter's Chapel, Geneva, the Diocese should erect a Memorial Church on its site, to cost not less than twenty thousand dollars, and to be the property of the Diocese. Bishop Coxe at once issued a Pastoral Letter earnestly commending this plan, and it was unanimously approved by the Convention of 1865. The Rev. Dr. Rankine, who had been appointed to obtain subscriptions for the work, entered on this duty with great energy, and, as will be chron- icled later, with great success ; but it was five years before the Memorial Church was completed and consecrated.
At his first Convention, in August, 1865, in S. Luke's Church, Rochester, the Bishop was greeted by 100 Clergymen and 187 Lay Delegates representing 92 Parishes. No one who heard it could ever forget his opening sermon, " A Father in Christ," in memory of Bishop De Lancey.t I wish it were possible even to quote from it
* Journ. W. N. Y. 1892, p. 37.
1 Published in the Journal, p. 205.
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DIOCESE OF WESTERN NEW YORK
here at length. I must give its last words, for they were the Bishop's first words of exhortation to his Diocese.
" Men are nothing ; Christ is all in all. Yet this is the very con- sideration which should animate us to gird up our loins like men, and prove that 'Christ liveth in us'; yes, and worketh by us. Oh ! death- less Church of God, who would not live in thy service, who would not labour for thine extension, who would not share in thine immor- tality ! It is sweet, and it is becoming to die for one's country, if need be ; but oh ! to live and die for the souls of men, how much better and sweeter ; how blessed a thing to proclaim the Gospel to a perishing world ; how glorious to glorify the Cross, and then to fall asleep in Jesus, and so 'to rest from our labours !'
" This is the spirit to which we are prompted by our Father's example ; so would we be remembered ; so commemorated. And so, while we gather round this altar in remembrance of the great Apostle and High Priest of our profession, let us devote ourselves anew to His service, resolved that His glory in this Diocese shall not be diminished for lack of our zeal and efforts. When the solemn service of the Church shall be read over our graves, let those who surround our coffins feel that there is meaning in the words, 'They rest from their labours.' Surely all those who assisted at the impressive obsequies of our departed Bishop, felt as I did, when those words were chanted over his bier, felt how much they may be made to mean ! I had taken leave of his face forever ; I had looked tenderly on those hands which gave me my commission, as I saw them folded in their unwonted, I may say their first repose ; I had trembled as I saw the earth thrown upon his cold corpse-'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust'; and God grant I may never forget with what emotions I was thrilled and comforted when the Anthem broke forth, like a voice from heaven ; 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ; even so, saith the Spirit ; for they rest from their labours.' "
In his Address the Bishop referred to the. " most serious problem" which the end of the Civil War had brought upon us, in "the millions of negroes now freedmen, but thrown in ignorance and spiritual desti- tution on our hands,"-" a question which the Church must not leave to worldly men, nor to speculative philanthropy." He urged in the strongest terms an earnest effort for the liberal endowment of Hobart College, already begun by the munificent offer of Mr. John H. Swift to give one-twentieth of whatever sum might be raised for that pur- pose. He reminded the Diocese that two propositions, made long since by Bishop De Lancey in the interest of the whole Church, now
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called for immediate consideration : the practical reorganization of the General Theological Seminary, "in its present condition unworthy of the Church," and the "erecting divers provinces where now we exist as one province only of the Church Catholic, "a necessity which, as he says, Bishop White had long ago foretold, although he never dreamed, when he made his prediction, of the extent of territory now included in that one Province. The restoration of legislative unity with the Church in the South, (essential unity never having been for a minute suspended), called only for immediate and cordial " revival of old affections and friendships, old fraternal counsels and commun- ings." " Let us do what we can to teach our countrymen sound ideas of Christian unity ; and by imparting to others the Apostolic blessings which once bound Christians together, let us do the greatest work that can be done for the salvation of the land."
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