USA > Pennsylvania > Dauphin County > Harrisburg > Centennial memorial, English Presbyterian congregation, Harrisburg, Pa. > Part 4
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It is true that their first ministers came from the mother country. But they did not come to evangelize an unevan- gelized people. They came to small communities, which were Christian from the beginning; communities whose members knew the word of God and believed it, and had .studied the great system of truth embodied in the West- minster symbols, and were moulded by it. In this respect, the Scotch-Irish settlements were precisely like the early settlements on Massachusetts Bay and in the Hartford and New Haven colonies. I dwell on this fact for the reason that in the histories of Presbyterianism in America thus far written, too much relatively has been assigned to the ministry and too little to the strong, God-fearing men and women of the laity. The life of these churches at the beginning was in this respect precisely like their subsequent careers. What would the later history of this church have been but for the profound religious life, and the continuous religious activity of the laity-the godly women and God- fearing men; but for the church in the household, the training of the children by parents, and the family Bible, and the family prayers? So it was at the organization of our congregations in all the province.
Closely connected with the churches they founded were the parochial schools. I am sure that I need take no time to show you that the Calvinistic theology must lead, as in fact
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Sermon of Rev. John De Witt.
it always has led, to the establishment of a system of gen- eral, education. A people, fed on the religious truths of that highly organized and profound system, will always see to it, as a matter of the first importance, that their children are disciplined and caltured far more carfully than them- selves. We all know how true this is to-day. It was just as true at the beginning. Our forefathers planted the church and the school side by side. "With them," as has well been said, "religion and education were inseparable; no religion without the training of the intelligence; no education divorced from piety. The school was always planted near the church, the schoolmaster was often the pastor, often a candidate for the ministry, often one of the pillars of the church."* So Mr. Chambers, writing of the Scotch-Irish settlers in the Cumber- land Valley, says : "Simultaneously with the organization of congregations was the establishment of school houses in every neighborhood. In these schools were taught the rudiments of education, of which a part was generally obtained at home. The Bible was the standard daily reader, and the Shorter Catechism was to be recited and heard by all in the school as a standard exercise on every Saturday morning."
But they were not content with this general system of education. They had scarcely been settled in their new homes when they began to feel that the ministry, and the members of the other learned professions, must be provided out of their own families. The Scotch Irish immigration and settlement took place about one hundred years later than the settlement of Massachusetts. The Scotch Irish were without the advantage of a charter of their own,
* Prof. G. Macloskie : The Scotch-Irish and Education.
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such as was possessed by the inhabitants of Massachusetts. But they began at once individually and through their church courts, to make provision for the higher education. So William Tennent established the Log College on the Neshaminy, that was merged in Princeton College in 1746. So, as early as 1739, John Thompson proposed to the P'res- bytery of Donegal-the Presbytery to which Paxtang and Derry and Hanover churches belonged-the erection of a school to be placed under the care of the Synod, and the Synod in the same year approved the plan ; and thus arose the school at New London in this State. So arose the Acad- emy in Philadelphia, with Francis Allison as Principal, out of which issued the great University of Pennsylvania. So . was founded the celebrated school of Samuel Finley at Not- tingham, and the school of Samuel Blair at Fagg's Manor. It was precisely these schools and others like them that made the middle colonies independent at the war of Inde- pendence, and enabled them to come to the formation of the Federal and State constitutions, with culture and dis- cipline adequate to the great work .*
As to the home life of these early Presbyterians, it must be remembered that they came to subdue to the use of man a section of the country which, if rich and fruitful, was dif- fienlt to conquer. Moreover they had to forge and frame their instruments of conquest. The modern era of labor- saving machinery was not to be ushered in for a century. When Thomas McCormick, in 1745, took up one hundred acres of land in Hanover township of this county, he did not have the advantage in reaping his crops, of the great
* See Appendix, Note I.
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Sermon of Rev. John De Witt.
"harvester," which his great grandson Cyrus Hall McCor- mick invented almost ninety years later. Our forefathers rose early and toiled hard. Theirs was not the generation that formed towns and cities. It was not the first, but the second John Harris, who founded Harrisburg. The first generation was a generation of farmers. They settled "near the springs and the brooks and in the valleys." They lived in log cabins, of two rooms. They found comfort on hard settees and benches. They had few dishes, and few spoons, even of pewter; and they had to be content often with cups and pitchers of gourds. Slowly the con- ditions changed ; and all the more slowly because Great Britain's colonial policy was as harsh and tyrannical as possible. For instead of fostering, Great Britain did. all that could be done to prevent the growth of manufactures in her possessions. But hard as the life was the Scotch Irish farmers were sustained by the great truths of their holy religion, and by that strong racial character that has made the Scotch the most persistent of European peoples. In. that early period when they were called to conquer nature, during which, as a great American divine has pointed out, there was in the conditions of their lives great danger of a lapse into barbarism, they were held to a high ideal of life by their theology and their church life. They were lifted out of their hardships by their study of the Bible and their common and their private prayers to God.
The Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlers of this part of the country have more than once been attacked by writers of our own State for their treatment of the red Indians, and the "Uprising of the Paxtang Boys," and the summary ven-
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Centennial Memorial.
geance taken by them at Conestoga and at Lancaster upon those whom the provincial government would not punish, has been made the text of many a discourse against the cruelty of our ancestors. That wrongs have been perpe- trated against individuals among the Red men by individ- uals in every frontier settlement of the country there is no good reason to doubt. To say that among the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlers were " men of blood," is only to say that they were like any other community. But that as com- munities they wronged the Indians there is no shadow of evidence. We may lay it down as a truth based upon a law of God, that no people could ever have had a title to this fruitful valley as a hunting ground. At the beginning, God gave man the Garden and placed him there "to dress it and to keep it." And we may be sure that it is God's will that Esau, the mere hunter, shall always go down before the laborious Jacob, the worker in the fields, the plain man dwelling in tents. The laborious Scotch-Irishman found no difficulty in dwelling side by side with the laborious German man. Together and in peace in this very county they have turned the sod of the valley and the uplands, and sowed and reaped the harvests.
But the hunter, the Red Indian, who would not labor and who contemplated with envy the growing wealth of the white man, mourned the loss of the land as mere "hunting grounds;" and along the frontiers of the country killed or carried off to bondage more bitter than death hundreds of families. It is no wonder, as the historian Parkman says, that the frontier people of Pennsylvania "were goaded to desperation by long-continued suffering." Day after day
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Sermon of Rev. John De Witt.
they lived in danger from the treachery and the cruelty of the savages whom no kindness could make trustworthy friends, and whom no efforts succeeded in civilizing. We, who remember the civil war, know how easily, at so late a date as eighteen hundred and sixty-one, the most violent of passions were enkindled. What wonder that they were aroused in the days of our forefathers, when it was the custom because it was an absolute necessity of John Elder's congregation, the minister included, to worship God in Paxtang church under arms .* And when Lazarus Stewart was told that the Indian settlement at Conestoga, professedly friendly to the whites, was treacherously harboring and entertaining an Indian known to have murdered a white man's family, what wonder that at the time when the con- spiracy of Pontiac was threatening every English settlement on the frontier, a company was raised to inflict the punish- ment, which a neglectful government refused to inflict? Whatever may be said of this particular incident, this I think is true; that no English speaking population in the country has ever dealt more fairly as between the Indian and themselves than the Scotch-Irish citizens of Pennsylvania; and no people certainly were subject to greater provocations.
The mother churches of this part of the country were planted between the close of the first quarter and the close of the first half of the century. Paxtang, the mother of this church, being founded about 1732. It ought to be said that the period was not one in which the religious life was warm and glowing. In this respect, it was a period of deca- dence. There was a good deal of mere formality ; and
*Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, Vol. II., p. 119, et seq.
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there was a strong disposition to distrust religious experi- ences. This disposition was nowhere stronger than in this part of the country. But the early Presbyterian churches of the Middle Colonies had scarcely been planted when, in both England and America, there occurred the Great Evan- gelical Revival. * In Great Britain it infused new life into the churches of England and Scotland and Ireland. In America its influence was felt from Massachusetts to Geor- gia. It was marked by the earnest preaching of great preachers. The sermons of Edwards in New England of the Tennents in the Middle Colonies, and of Davies in Vir- ginia remain to us and serve to show the type of preaching common at the time. Some of its methods were blame- worthy, and some of its evils were serious; but the inci- dental evils were spots upon the sun. It radiated every- where the warmth and the light the churches needed for a more vigorous life. The Scotch-Irish churches of this section fought against its methods. The Rev. John Elder, strong, honest, believing in the Bible and in the theology of his church, had no confidence in it. But, its influ- ence was felt in all the congregations, and in most of the houses of the Valley. Even before the War of the Revo- lution it had wrought a great change in the life of the churches and of the people. And when the hardships of that terrible struggle had brought the people nearer to God, the more genial religious life which had been wrought by the Spirit of God during the great evangelical movement' was characteristic of the homes and the churches of our
*Here, as in one or two other places, I quote from my address before the Presbyterian Historical Society on the First General Assembly.
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Sermon of Rev. John De Witt.
fathers. Meanwhile, the country about Harrisburg had been more thickly settled, and the son of the first settler had founded the town. Thus, in the more genial atmosphere of the great revival, this church was founded one hundred years ago.
I do not know how better to conclude this brief account of the conditions that immediately ante-dated the birth of this church, than to urge upon you the duty of keeping green the memory of your godly ancestry, that you may intelligently thank God for the blessings he has given to you, in preparing the way for this church by their faithful and laborious and religious lives. The sons and daughters of this congregation owe a large debt not only to their parents and grandparents who for three generations have been members of this church, but also, and this a debt quite as large, to those more remote ancestors, who while they spun the wool and linen and plowed the soil, read the Bible, and taught the catechism, and honored the Sab- bath, and built Hanover and Derry and Paxtang churches, and established schools, and laid the foundations of a great Christian State. If Paul could glory in his people to whom belonged the covenants and the giving of the law and the promises, you may thank God for those from whom you are descended. But while we thank God for them, let us remember that in leaving to us a great inheritance they have left to us great duties, also. The family religion which was theirs it is ours to maintain; the truth which made them strong it is for us to guard; the public schools of which they were the founders here, it is our sacred mission to defend against all open and concealed enemies; the Bible
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which made them strong and courageous and hopeful in life and in death, it is our duty to make our rule of faith and life; and to the God to whose service they gave them- selves-the God of our fathers-it is our privilege at this time to dedicate anew all our powers and possessions in an everlasting covenant.
At the close of Dr. De Witt's address, the Rev. Thomas H. Robinson, D. D., for thirty years pastor of this church, offered prayer. The minister announced hymn No. 730 which the congregation, having risen, sang with spirit.
See the ransom'd millions stand, Palms of conquest in their hand ; This before the throne their strain, "Hell is vanquish'd ; death is slain ; Blessing, honor, glory, might, Are the conqueror's native right ; Thrones and powers before him fall, Lamb of God and Lord of all !"
Hasten, Lord, the promised hour : Come in glory and in power : Still thy foes are unsubdued ; Nature sighs to be renew'd ; Time has nearly reach'd its sum ; All things with the bride say "Come ! " Jesus ! whom all worlds adore, Come, and reign for evermore !
After the Benediction had been pronounced by the Rev. Dr. John De Witt, Smart's March in D was rendered as an organ postlude, and the audience dispersed with the con- vietion that Centennial Week had been successfully inau- gurated, and would be a most notable week in the history of the church.
SUNDAY EVENING, February the 11th, 1894, at 6 o'clock.
SEVENTY-EIGHTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. Mr. Samuel J. M. MeCarrell, Superintendent, presiding.
A large audience, filling every available space in pew, aisle, vestibule and gallery, gathered to celebrate the Seventy-eighth anniversary of the Sunday-school. Many persons were unable to enter the church. The Primary department occupied the front seats of the middle block of pews, the Intermediate department were in the block of pewsfto the right of the Superintendent, while the Senior department were in the block to the left of the Superinten- dent, and in the middle block, back of the Primary depart- ment. Those not connected with the Sunday-school found seats or standing room as best they could. The decorations of the church were the same as those of the morning.
The services were opened promptly at 6 o'clock with the organ prelude, Silas's " March in F.," followed by an anthem, " I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord," sung by the choir of the Senior department. This choir was composed of about fifteen of the best voices in the Senior department, under the direc- tion of Mrs. John C. Harvey. Mrs. Harvey was most devoted and painstaking in training them for the accurate rendering of the solo and chorus parts in the anthems of the evening.
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The SUPERINTENDENT. The Rev. William P. Patterson, Pastor of the Olivet Presbyterian church, will offer the invo- cation, and at its close will lead the congregation in repeat- ing the Lord's prayer.
The congregation then united in singing the first and third stanzas of No. 30 in Winnowed Songs, the hymm book in use in the Senior department:
True hearted, whole hearted, faithful and loyal. King of our lives ; by thy grace we will be ; Under the standard exalted and royal, Strong in thy strength we will battle for thee.
Chorus. Peal out the watch word ! silence it never ! Song of our spirits rejoicing and free ; Peal out the watch word : loyal forever, King of our lives, by thy grace we will be.
True hearted, whole hearted. Saviour all-glorious ! Take thy great power, and reign there alone, Over our wills and affections victorious. Freely surrendered and wholly thine own-Cho.
Mr. Samuel C. Miller, Secretary of the Senior department, read the report of the Primary department. This report showed that there were enrolled during the year 1893 five officers and three hundred and nine scholars, a total of three hundred and fourteen. That the offerings during the same period amounted to $95.36, which sum was appropriated to the support of the school, and to missionary and benevo- lent causes.
Seven scholars have been present every Sabbath : May Landis, Katie Wolford, Sarah MeCord, Mabel Swanberry,
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Exercises of Primary Department.
Thomas MeCord, Malcolm Dwyer, Freddie Ehrisman. One scholar has been present every Sabbath but one, Kenneth Dwyer. Four scholars have been present every Sabbath but two: Ellen Boyd, Minnie Wolford, Eva Smith, Helen Weidman.
The SUPERINTENDENT. We will now be glad to listen to the exercises of the Primary department.
The children of this department, with Mr. George R. Fleming leading, sang :
" ANOTHER YEAR."
Another year we've trod the way That leads to joy and heaven, Then join with us and sing to-day Of blessings freely given.
Chorus.
Singing, singing,
As the years go rolling by,
Working, striving,
For a home on high.
Each trusting heart with pleasure rife Each eye with hope is gleaming. While sweetly o'er the path of life The Saviour's smile is beaming .- Cho.
'Mid pastures green at last we'll rest Beside the flowing river, And with the happy spirits blest We'll dwell in peace forever .- Cho.
Mrs. Gilbert M. McCauley, the Superintendent of the department, then led the children in repeating the 100th Psalm, after which they sang :
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Centennial Memorial.
LITTLE WORKERS.
Early in the morning When the glorious sun, All the earth adorning, Has its work begun .. We will rise with gladness And a song of Joy, For each happy moment Brings us sweet employ.
Chorus.
Working for the Master, In his garden fair, For he loves to see us, Working there.
Deeds of love and honor Will the Father bless, Deeds of joy and patience, And of truthfulness ! All will grow together Till the reaper come, Then he'll pluck them gladly For his harvest home .- Cho.
Bright as heav'nly sunshine Is the Father's smile ; When the shades of even Bid us rest awhile. Let us listen softly, We may hear him say : "Well done, little workers, Faithful all the day."-Cho.
The part the little folks take in the anniversary is always listened to with interest and delight.
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Address by Mr. George E. Sterry.
The choir of the Senior department followed with the anthem, "Lord, Thy Mercy Streameth."
The SUPERINTENDENT. Dr. De Witt, who is noted upon our programme for an address at this point in our exercises, is unable to be with us, because of the desire of Dr. Chambers, of the Pine Street Church, that he should occupy his pulpit this evening. He has, however, furnished a substitute in the person of Mr. George E. Sterry, for the past twenty-five years superintendent of Hope Chapel Sunday-school, a mis- sion of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian church, New York city, in which he is an elder. Mr. Sterry has had knowl- edge of this school in the past. Some years ago he came here upon a visit, and after repeating his visit, I cannot tell how many times, succeeded in capturing and carrying away with him a young lady who was then a scholar in this school. I am sure that he ought to have a very high re- gard for the school, because this young lady, to whom I have just referred, has made him a most excellent wife. On this occasion we have captured Mr. Stery, and I know that you will be greatly gratified to hear from him at this time.
Mr. Sterry spoke substantially as follows, his address being listened to with rapt attention by old and young:
MR. GEORGE E. STERRY'S ADDRESS.
I am going to use small words so that the small folks can understand me, as I am most anxious that they should. Your superintendent has said that I have been for twenty- five years superintendent of the Hope Chapel Mission school in New York. About twenty-five years ago a little com- pany of us went over to the east side in New York city and
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Centennial Memorial.
established a Sunday-school which we have carried on ever since. It has been the means of much blessing to many people. I could tell you many stories which would show you how much good has been done. More than three hun- dred young people have united with the church as a result of this mission work. One boy entered our Sunday-school ten years ago. He was at that time fifteen years old. He was not very bright, but he had one good point, he was willing to come to Sunday-school. There is always hope for a boy who will attend Sunday-school. Now he is super- intendent of a Sunday-school over in Brooklyn and is an elder in the church.
A few Sundays ago he asked the children what was the forbidden fruit-you know we had a lesson recently about the forbidden fruit-and they all said it was the peach. Probably that was because I was over there a little while before and told them a story of a forbidden peach. If you will listen I will tell it to you. On one occasion a mother put a beautiful peach on an upper shelf in the cupboard, and as she was leaving the house to go on an errand, she told Joim and Mary, her children, that they must not touch that peach. After she was gone, John said to Mary, " I would like to see that peach." Mary replied, " Mother said you must not touch it." John said, "I will not touch it, I just want to look at it." So he drew a chair to the side of the cupboard and stood upon it, but he could not see or reach the peach. After a little while he tried again, putting a book upon the chair, but without success. Then another book and another trial, but still he could not reach the peach. Then a third book and a third trial.
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Address by Mr. George E. Sterry.
This time he was able to reach the peach. As he held it, it looked so good he thought he would taste it. Just as he bit into it his mother opened the door, and he was caught in the very act. And what was more, the peach, instead of being a nice, ripe peach, was a wax peach, in which his teeth stuck so that he could neither open nor shut his mouth. He stood there guilty before his mother. What a foolish thing for a boy to disobey his parents.
Twenty years ago one of our girls brought fifteen new scholars into the Sunday-school in a very short time. She afterwards gave her heart to Christ, united with the church, and is now the wife of a Christian gentleman who is a lawyer and an elder in the church. He also was a scholar in the school at one time. You thus see, my dear children, that the Sunday-school is a great blessing to those who attend, and I hope that this school will be the means of leading many of you to give your hearts to Jesus Christ.
I will close what I have to say with the story of an English Lord who offered to the people round about his country residence to pay all their debts. He published it everywhere in the neighborhood that between 10 and 12 o'clock on a certain day he would pay the debts of any one who came to him and asked him to do so. When the time came many curious people gathered about his office wondering what it all meant, but no one ventured to go in and ask him to pay their debts. At last an old man and his wife came up, and as they were going in some one said " You don't think he will pay your debts, do you?" And he said, " Yes, certainly I do, for he said he would." They went in and gave him a list of all that they owed,
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Centennial Memorial.
and he drew his check upon the bank for the whole amount. They were the only ones whose debts were paid because they were the only ones who had faith to take their lord at his word. How foolish it was for those who stood about the office not to believe their lord and ask him to do what he promised to do! Our Lord Jesus has promised to pay all our debts, if we will but ask him. Let us all ask him to pay the debt of sin which we owe, and so save us from eternal death.
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