USA > New York > New York City > The history of the Broadway tabernacle church, from its organization in 1840 to the close of 1900, including factors influencing its formation > Part 10
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Dr. Thompson, who was at his best whenever he had a cause to defend or promote, labored with unremitting energy for the independence of Congregational churches from Presby- terian entanglement. In a report unanimously adopted by the State General Association, in 1848, he exposed the unequal and injurious workings of the " Plan of Union " and moved its discontinuance, following the path blazed by the Michigan conference; doing this, he says, "for peace with a sister denomination as well as for progress of our own." į As chair-
* Joseph P. Thompson, Memoir of David Hale, p. 124.
+ Broadway Tabernacle Church : Its History and Work, pp. 35, 36. # Ibid., p. 36.
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man of a committee appointed by the same association he pre- pared the call and constructed the plan for the great Albany convention of 1852, the first synodical Congregational gather- ing that fairly represented the whole denomination since the Cambridge Synod of 1646-48. Four hundred and sixty min- isters and delegates from seventeen States convened at this call, including the leaders of Congregationalism East and West. Five hundred copies of the report of the Michigan City convention were distributed among the members of the Albany convention, and the Rev. Parsons Cooke, of the Puritan Recorder, wrote (October 2, 1852) :
"In looking over the report of that Convention [Michigan City] which we made and published at the time, we have been struck by the remarkable fact that most of the important measures passed at this Albany Convention were substantially the same as those which had been passed six years before by the Convention at Michigan City."
Thus the pastor worked on the same lines that had been marked out by his parishioners in 1836. In their devotion to the interests of their own church polity they were at one. By the Albany convention the unity of Congregationalism was at last made evident.
Next to its repudiation of the " Plan of Union " the most valuable work for the denomination done at this convention was the approving of the movement, begun and urged by Henry C. Bowen, and the appointing of a committee, to raise $50,000 for the building of church edifices in the West. The Tabernacle Church encouraged this work by a volunteer com- mittee to solicit donations to the fund. The sum raised for church building purposes exceeded the amount proposed by more than $12,000, and the effort resulted in the formation of the American Congregational Union in the old Tabernacle. The next year, of its thirteen trustees, five were Tabernacle men. The trustees of this Union, twelve years later, called the various State committees to meet, in the present church build- ing, as a conference preliminary to convening the first National Council. At this Council, held in Boston, Dr. Thompson was appointed first of the two assistant moderators and chairman
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of the Committee on Declaration of Faith, besides serving on another important committee, and again, in 1870, the national delegation met in the Tabernacle to plan for the Jubilee of the Pilgrims. That meeting recommended among other memorial services, the holding of a Pilgrim Memorial Con- vention at Chicago, Ill., April 27, 1870, and there the move- ment began that resulted in the organization of the National Council. In view of the national influence exerted by the Tabernacle Church it was in no idle spirit of boastfulness that Dr. Thompson exclaimed in his farewell sermon:
" May this church never become so absorbed in caring for its own affairs as to recede from that position of national preferment, in re- spect of the principles and the progress of its own communion, to which it has attained by fidelity in upholding and by generosity in giving."
Still another important contribution by Dr. Thompson to the cause of Congregationalism was the inception and successful establishment of a denominational journal in New York City. In planning for a Congregational newspaper in New York, Mr. Thompson had no thought of any editorial connection with it himself. Messrs. Hunt, Bowen, and McNamee, and S. B. Chittenden were warmly interested in the project and stood ready to furnish the requisite capital, while Mr. Thomp- son set out to find a New England editor. Failing in this, he endeavored to induce Dr. Leonard Bacon to give up his New Haven church for the editorial chair. Mr. Hale was eagerly interested in the enterprise. He offered to subscribe $1,000 toward a capital of $10,000 to start the paper, and was ready to become its business editor, either personally or through his son, Mr. Richard Hale, with the understanding that Dr. Bacon should have entire editorial control. But in June, 1848, Mr. Hale was stricken with apoplexy, and died about six months later, and as for Dr. Bacon, he could not be persuaded to resign his pastorate. Still Mr. Thompson kept his project in mind, and one evening Mr. Seth W. Benedict, an active mem- ber of the Tabernacle Church, while calling upon his pastor, chanced to remark, "If you wish to see a Congregational
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THE SECOND PASTOR, JOSEPH P. THOMPSON
paper in New York you must start it yourself and I will help you." Thus encouraged, Dr. Thompson set out the next morn- ing for New Haven to consult Dr. Bacon; and the two re- turned together to enlist Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., of Brooklyn. Capital was at once furnished according to agreement; Rev. Joshua Leavitt, whose long experience on The Evangelist had well fitted him for the post, was engaged as office editor; Mr. Benedict was secured as publisher; the name and policy of the paper were decided on; and, a fortnight afterward, on the morning of December 7, 1848, the four editors and five proprietors were all invited by Mr. Benedict, the publisher, to meet at ten o'clock in the press-room, in a small dark base- ment. Dr. Thompson arrived first; and, having determined to secure the first copy of the paper, placed himself nearest the press, holding his position resolutely against all later comers. At last Mr. Benedict said: "Gentlemen, editors, proprietors of The Independent, are you still ready?" The in- stant echo came: "All ready!" Mr. Benedict shouted to the engineer, " Start the press!" and Mr. Thompson seized triumphantly the first copy of the first issue of the paper which for fourteen years this triumvirate of ministers edited with surprising success .*
In their salutatory the editors said:
" There has been growing up in this metropolis, in this State, in the great and free North-West, a body of churches whose organization is founded on the great New England principle of CONGREGATIONAL INDE- PENDENCE. Multitudes of intelligent Christian men who are not in these churches are in sympathy with them, and are looking for some popular exposition of current ecclesiastical and religious questions, and of all the progress of our times as seen from the position of that great prin- ciple. . . . Our hope is to make such a newspaper as every intelli- gent and large-hearted pastor will welcome to his own family and to the families of his flock. We hope that our labor as editors of a re- ligious journal-a labor which requires us to regard with habitual attention all the great interests of the church and of humanity-will better qualify us for our work as pastors whether in the pulpit or from house to house. At the same time we also hope that our relation as pastors, constantly employed in the pastoral work, and holding constant
* Henry C. Bowen, The Independent, December 6, 1888.
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intercourse with other pastors, and with the churches, will enable us, in some respects, to make a better newspaper than if we had retired from the pastoral office or had never known its duties and its sympa- thies. We hope to pay our weekly visits in this way to thousands of families, spreading before them the changing map of the Church and of the world; teaching, exhorting, warning all; enriching each reader's mind with facts and principles, touching the springs of Christian affec- tion and devotion, and aiding and cheering all the while the labor of the living ministry in a thousand homes.
[Signed]
LEONARD BACON, JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, RICHARD S. STORRS, JR."
It must have been of no small advantage to these city clergy- men to be able to follow up and drive home their Sunday utterances by ringing mid-week editorials.
In its issue of December 2, 1869, the twenty-first anni- versary of The Independent's birth, a reminiscent editorial re- calls the office at " number 22 Beekman Street, into which every day at two o'clock stepped the brisk, smiling, and industrious Dr. Thompson; into which about once a fortnight came the venerable head of Dr. Bacon, and into which, about twice a year, moved the eloquent step of Dr. Storrs,
' Whose very foot had music in't As he came up the stairs.'"
The writer hinted that the rarity of Dr. Storrs's visits might be due to fear of the printer, sorely tried by his much- corrected proofs. As to the other editors, he said :
" Dr. Thompson rarely and Dr. Bacon never made an alteration. The exact measure of their fame among our readers we cannot gauge, but among our printers their memory is without a stain of reproach to this day."
Of the three editors Dr. Thompson was the most active and responsible-" by far the most efficient," says Dr. Bacon :
" Week after week, year after year (extraordinary absences ex- cepted), every column of every issue was inspected by him for its last corrections, before going to the press. The experienced sagacity of Dr. Leavitt, as well as his great editorial skill, was invaluable; but to the
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youthful enthusiasm of Dr. Thompson, to his indefatigable diligence, and to his marvellous rapidity of thought and pen, more than to what could be done by either of his colleagues in the responsible editorship, the new journal was indebted for its rapid and continued success." *
Dr. Thompson spent, as a rule, an hour at the office daily, meeting the others for conference on Monday morning, and planning, together, their editorial work. Dr. Bacon says of the editors' design in starting The Independent:
" It was not so much his ambition and theirs to advance their sect, as it was to put an ignorant reluctant Church right before the world. It was the day when reform, in despair of the support which the Church ought to have given it, was ready to throw itself into the arms of un- belief. Dr. Thompson was one of the men who saw the exigency, and in his early youth declared that slavery must perish because it was not only an offence against the rights of man but a crime against the law of God and the brotherhood of the Church of Christ. It was that he might teach the Church morality, that he might make it aggressive against sin, that he took a foremost part in conducting The Inde- pendent." t
Dr. Storrs, forty years afterward, in writing of those early days, compares himself and Dr. Thompson to "two emulous novices, in maiden armor " cantering " with gay audacity into the lists by the side of the tough and experienced knights, as if it were all to be a festive holiday game and there were never to be hard or sharp blows given or taken." } The first number of the paper was issued without a single pledged sub- scriber. In seven years its weekly edition was 15,000. Soon after the paper was established, Dr. Bacon, the senior editor, went abroad for a year or more; Dr. Leavitt, the experienced journalist, confined his labors, according to the arranged pro- gramme, to office work and the news department, and these two young ministers had to bear the brunt of many an excit- ing controversy in the cause of freedom. Important among these was their brave opposition to the Tract Society on the matter of its pledged and offensive silence about slavery and its insufficient financial reports, and their contention that Dr.
* The Independent, October 2, 1879. t Ibid., September 25, 1879.
# Ibid., December 6, 1888.
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Bushnell should have liberty of speech whether his opinions suited them or not-a stand which was bold enough then, though now it seems the merest truism.
Dr. Storrs goes on to say :
"Then came the Fugitive Slave law, and the Union-Saving craze which followed; and while Dr. Bacon was off in Persia, with his life in peril among the Koords, all the beasts of Ephesus seemed suddenly to have sighted or snuffed their opportunity, and to be combined in one passionate onset against The Independent proprietors, editors, as- sistant editor, and the paper itself.
"The spirit of blithe and adventurous nonchalance with which we had begun our work had been by that time a good deal sobered. We recognized fully at the office the gravity of the crisis, and its severity. But we certainly were not frightened: and I do not think that we ever gave back, by a foot-breadth, from the front-line of our persistent opposition to slavery, or of our endeavor to rally and hold the Chris- tian people of our country in determined antagonism to it. The Castle Garden frenzy seemed, for the moment, to carry all before it, but I know from distinguished individual testimonies, some of which I still have, that our work at the time was not without its important effects ; and the development of the great party which first took organic form in 1856, and which has now for the seventh time been intrusted with the conduct of national affairs, was certainly due, in a measure at least, to the influence of the paper at that angry and clamorous crisis, and in following years. The minds and consciences of ministers and church members, throughout the range of our widening circulation, were fully prepared for the happy consummation when it came." *
* The Fortieth Anniversary. The Independent, December 6, 1888.
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CHAPTER VI. FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW TABERNACLE.
A NUMBER of important church and parish matters came up for settlement between the years 1846 and 1856. The ques- tion of absentees would naturally arise when the trend of population turned from the vicinity of the church toward the uptown districts, and the congregation became more and more a shifting one. The matter was first brought up by Mr. Hale in 1847, and, after some months, a working plan was accepted. The rules, as published in the church manual (1855), were adopted May 13, 1851, when a list of absentees was ordered made, and April 26, 1853; * and certain principles of discipline embraced in the report of a special committee were adopted June 29, 1852.} This report recommended the appointment, from time to time, of committees of inquiry upon the cases of absentees or of members who, though residing in the neigh- borhood, were supposed to be living in neglect of covenant vows; stress being laid on the fact that these committees were not inquisitorial, but were appointed solely to procure informa- tion in regard to the residence and church connection of de- linquent or absent members.
There had been already, as was but natural in so large a church, a number of cases of discipline, one of the most pain- ful being that of a deacon of the church against whom charges of dishonesty were brought in 1847. After being admonished for the same cause and for drunkenness, he was first sus- pended, and, at last, January 3, 1850, excommunicated. One woman also was suspended in 1847 " for supporting herself and family by appearing on a theatre's stage."
In June, 1848, an attack of apoplexy warned Mr. Hale to * Appendix F. + Manual, 1873.
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settle his temporal affairs as speedily as possible, and the trustees responded to his request that he should be relieved from all obligations assumed in the name of the society, and that the indebtedness of the Tabernacle Church to him should be cancelled. His illness lasted about seven months, during which time he gradually relinquished the many schemes for usefulness which he had planned, and resigned himself to the Will that throughout his busy, helpful life he had endeavored to follow. He sent his love to all the Tabernacle Church, to its pastor and several members by name, and in his wandering thoughts desired to be " dated " from the Tabernacle. He died in Fredericksburg, Va., January 26, 1849, leaving a strong, united church to carry on the work which he had begun, single- handed, with arduous self-sacrifice and abounding faith, less than nine years before.
The continuous letting of the Tabernacle for large and sometimes boisterous gatherings became a weariness to Dr. Thompson, as it had been to Mr. Andrews before him; par- ticularly when the church prayer-meeting, or weekly lecture, was “ disturbed and rendered unprofitable by noisy assem- blages " in the audience-room directly over the place of meet- ing. Various entries in the records, such as a vote of the church committee to secure a lecture-room away from the Tabernacle " because of noise of clapping and stamping over- head," show considerable dissatisfaction, and, on June 27, 1848, a fortnight after Mr. Hale had been taken ill, the pas- tor offered a resolution in the church meeting that a committee of five should be appointed to confer with the trustees respect- ing this evil, and, in particular, to urge upon the congregation the importance of a vigorous effort for the early cancelling of the mortgage in order to diminish the necessity for the miscellaneous lettings of the house, and so to remove what he called " the great hindrance " to their temporal and spirit- ual prosperity. Mr. Thompson gave his reasons in full, and the motion was passed unanimously. In the autumn of the same year the pastor went further and preached a sermon on the importance and pecuniary condition of the Tabernacle en-
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terprise (repeated by request), thus preparing the society for the action that was forced upon it by the loss of Mr. Hale; but its indebtedness was not cancelled at once, the society still found it necessary to let the house, and as late as Decem- ber 12, 1853, we find the church committee proposing to change the prayer-meeting evening because of the noise.
But the records of the church are largely occupied during this period with the affairs of other neighboring churches. The Tabernacle took part in the organization of eighteen new Congregational churches during this decade, to say nothing of the numerous councils to settle or unsettle pastors over these infant churches, or to render advice as to the pecuniary affairs of these struggling enterprises. By pastor and dele- gate it assisted in not less than eighty councils that concerned Congregationalism in New York City and State during those ten years.
Early in 1852 a crushing blow fell upon the pastor of the church. His wife, Mrs. Lucy O. Thompson, daughter of Mr. James Bartlett, of Portsmouth, N. H., who had been in failing health for several years, died on January 27th, leaving four little children to her husband's care. Under the great strain upon his affections and sympathies, caused by the ill- ness and death of his wife, Mr. Thompson's health at last gave way, and he was forced the following summer to ask release from pastoral duties for a year's absence abroad. The younger children were placed in charge of relatives of Mrs. Thompson, the society requested the trustees to provide funds for the expenses of their pastor's travel, equal in amount to his salary, and the following year they appropriated $600 to meet the indebtedness incurred for the children's maintenance during their father's absence, and increased the pastor's sal- ary to $3,000. Once before an additional sum had been paid Mr. Thompson, by the trustees, in order that his wife might be supplied with those comforts that her failing health re- quired. Thus was established that system of distinguished liberality which has marked the dealings of the Broadway Tabernacle with all its ministers.
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The letters that passed between pastor and people during these transactions were mutually affectionate and appreciative. In response to his application for release from work the trus- tees recorded their sympathy with him in his sorrow, and added :
" During all the time of your ministry among us we may confidently say that there has never been a time when the pastor has not had the entire confidence and affection of his people."
Dr. Thompson's rest had always an element of work in it, and this trip abroad was made to do service in aid of that Oriental study to which he was already turning his attention. Leaving his oldest son, a boy of nine years of age, with friends in France who cared for him as for their own, he now visited Egypt and the Holy Land, which held many enigmas that he desired to solve. From this time he devoted much time and study to Egyptology, being the first student in the country to obtain any distinction in this line of investigation.
On October 23, 1853, Dr. Thompson married Elizabeth C. Gilman, his wife's most trusted friend, daughter of William C. Gilman, Esq., whose family had come into the church on the same Sabbath with Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, the two house- holds having been on terms of special friendship.
Dr. Thompson's letter of acknowledgment, addressed on his return to the society, is full of interest. He confesses that, owing to the greater cost of living he has not been able to keep his family expenses within the limits of the salary on which he was settled, and is grateful that the necessary in- crease of salary has been made without any request for it on his part. He will not acknowledge to any over-work, though the charge was brought against him, no doubt justly, all his life; he says, rather, that his health was impaired " not by any excess of labors, but by a strong and wearying draught upon the affections and emotions at a time when public labors were also pressing," and that in making it easy for him to rest and travel they had proved the best of physicians. He continues :
" My life as pastor does not date exclusively from either the 'sunny' or the 'shady' side. I like a little of both for
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the best effect in morals as well as in nature. But this full burst of sunshine that has opened upon me since my return will last through many a shade. While I feel impelled to speak more than words can utter, I can only say 'My heart is yours, my strength is yours, my labors are yours, my life is yours, for Christ's sake and the Gospel's.'" Referring to his new ties he adds: "The same kind Providence that has restored to me my health has also restored to me my home; " and he gives the parish a cordial invitation to the parsonage, 63 Amity Street, on the following evening. Mrs. Thompson worked quietly but most efficiently to second her husband's efforts, and the home in Amity Street, as well as Number 32 West Thirty-sixth Street, where Dr. Thompson moved in 1857 when the old Tabernacle was sold, became a centre of helpful- ness and hospitality. " I will consult the wise woman," a sen- tence often heard from Dr. Thompson's lips, was not mere idle compliment.
In his sixtieth anniversary reminiscences Dr. William H. Thomson recalled the friendliness with which this busy pas- tor made his home and his intellectual pursuits serve the needs of his parishioners, especially the young men. He said:
"Dr. Thompson had a very pleasant custom of having small social gatherings at his house when he would first read an essay or contribu- tion which he was about to publish in some periodical or book,* and its subject would be offered for discussion by those present, many of whom were men greatly distinguished in the literary world, like Rev. Dr. Frothingham, Dr. Bellows, or William Cullen Bryant. At other times the company would be limited to members of his own congrega- tion ; but at all times the guests were privileged in being thus permitted to share in an intellectual feast, which often had the further and in- tense interest of association with some phase of stirring national con- test which was going on. I cannot but remember those evenings as bright memories indeed, testifying to the friendly sentiment which prompted Dr. Thompson to bring young men into the best fellowship which his position afforded."
But the ministrations of Dr. Thompson were by no means confined to his own stated congregation. In his tenth anni- * For a partial list of Dr. Thompson's published works, see Appendix H.
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versary sermon, preached April 8, 1855, from the text: " With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands," the pastor reviewed the general history of Congre- gationalism in New York for the decade, as well as the his- tory of the church. At that date he was the senior pastor of the Congregational order in the Southern District of New York; of the more than two hundred Congregational pas- tors in the State, only twelve had been settled longer than he. During these years there had been two periods of revival, in 1846 and in the winter of 1851-52, which had resulted in large accessions to the church. In the latter period Mr. Fin- ney had come again to New York and held, in his old church, services that had been fruitful of good results. But the rec- ords of the Church Committee bore testimony, from the first, to the efficacy of the spoken word in the Tabernacle pulpit. Many who came before the committee to be examined for ad- mission to the church, attributed their first awakening to a sermon by " our pastor," Mr. Andrews or Dr. Thompson, and, at this period, by Dr. Finney. In this sermon,* and in his last sermon in the old Tabernacle, Dr. Thompson illustrated, by instance after instance, the value to strangers of the Taber- nacle services in results that could not be reckoned by ordi- nary church statistics. An English lady from Jamaica, who had sought the pastor's counsel, a young student from South Carolina, a stranger casually met in Germany, an invalid seek- ing renewed life in Egypt, a doubter induced by a friend to listen to a gospel sermon, a Vermont lawyer curious to hear a New York preacher, had all personally confessed to Dr. Thompson their indebtedness for heavenly grace and comfort found there, when they were but chance attendants. Only " the Lord " could " count when He writes up the people that this man was born there."
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