USA > Rhode Island > Washington County > Wickford > A golden vial full of odours : a sermon preached at the old Narragansett church, St. Paul's parish, Wickford, Rhode Island, September ninth, MDCCCCVII on the two hundredth anniversary of its erection > Part 1
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 03585 3297
Go 974.502 W63go Goodwin, Daniel. A golden vial full of odours
A GOLDEN VIAL FULL OF ODOURS
A Sermon
PREACHED AT THE OLD NARRAGANSETT CHURCH ST. PAUL'S PARISH, WICKFORD RHODE ISLAND SEPTEMBER NINTH, MDCCCCVII ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF ITS ERECTION BY REV. DANIEL GOODWIN, PH. D., D.D. SOMETIME RECTOR OF THE PARISH
"And golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints."
PRINTED BY MEMBERS OF THE PARISH The Merrymount Press BOSTON : MDCCCCVIII
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
A GOLDEN VIAL FULL OF ODOURS
" And golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints." Revelation v. 8.
T HE most precious element of any historic edifice, or noted locality, consists, not in its material form, but in its human asso- ciations.
What enchains the heart of the visitor at Salis- bury is not so much the far-famed cathedral, with its sculptured front and heaven-soaring spire, as the memory of "holy George Herbert," in the neigh- bouring tiny chapel at Bemerton, pouring out his soul, in prayer and praise and tender admonition. Nor does the richly decorated fane of the Church of the Angels, at Assisi, very long arrest the feet of the pious pilgrim, chiefly eager to penetrate to the squalid cell beyond, where Francis was wont to bow his head, as at the Gate of Heaven. How gladly, too, does the traveller in the Holy Land leave even the storied battlements of Jerusalem behind, so that, in homely Bethany hard by, he may stand on the spot where Martha tended the house, and Mary prayed, and Lazarus breathed out his sweet young life, and Jesus wept tears of human love.
Hence was it that when the rapt Divine of Patmos went forth to gather gifts meet for the Lamb, who redeemed us to God by His blood, he did not choose stately palaces or towering domes, but welcomed, rather, humble cottages and secluded
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forest nooks, made fragrant with the petitions of men and women searching for a Saviour of their souls.
Perhaps, in his childhood days, passed in that Oriental land of poetry and enchantment, he had sometimes wandered in gardens planted with thou- sands of rose-trees, hanging down with their wealth of bloom. Perhaps, boy-like, he had stood watch- ing while the skilful servitors, as their manner is, plucked myriads of blossoms and patiently distilled from them a single drop of costly perfume, such as, imprisoned in some tiny flask, only kings can afford to purchase.
So when John was impelled by the Spirit to people that lonely isle with the mysterious hosts of the unseen world, and to set out its bare expanse with lively imagery (half memory and half vision), the recollection of that far-away scene of the rose- gardens came back to him, and naught else, in his glowing imagination, seemed so fitted to express the meet offering, to the King of Kings, of spots made sacred by the concentrated devotion of thou- sands of holy men, as flasks of precious incense. Accordingly he declares : "And when he had taken the book, the four beasts, and the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints."
We are assembled to-day, dear friends, to cele- brate the two hundredth anniversary of the build- ing of this venerable House of God, -St. Paul's
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Church in Narragansett. For ten scores of years has it braved the storms, which have beaten upon it from the Atlantic, and stood as a landmark in southern Rhode Island. In all New England, there remains no other church structure of our Faith, so ancient. Well worthy of our honour and affec- tion is the sturdy old edifice, with which are in- volved many of the choicest memories of our lives. St. Paul's Church, in Narragansett, we hail thee, to- day, Clarum et venerabile nomen !
But it is not the sight of the wood and the stone of the structure which stirs our emotions. It is not the size of the building: for it is small. It is not its architectural merits: for it has none worthy of men- tion. What moves us, is the fact that in this old edi- fice, so modest and simple and plain, there has been offered for two centuries the sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving. Whatever is best and worthiest in this community, to-day, is bound up with the struc- ture. A long line of prophets of the Lord have here set forth, in deep humility, but with a mighty faith, what has been put into their mouths as the good- news of Salvation. Ten generations of men, within its homely walls, have drunk in the message, and bowed themselves low in confession, and raised their hearts in prayer to the Mercy-Seat, and praised the Lord, their Redeemer, in sacred song, and been washed with the Water of Regeneration, and fed with Christ's Blessed Body and Blood.
Where, then, if not here, may be found a pre- cious storehouse of the noblest human aspirations
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and associations? Where, if not here, may we rever- ently recognize the presence of "golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints"?
The term ancient has just been applied, more than once, to express the claim to veneration of this edifice in which we are gathered. To a denizen of the Old World, accustomed, daily, to behold the architectural legacies of centuries long past, this word must appear almost a misnomer. In the eyes of a European, nothing in America is ancient. His chronometer refuses to register as old a building reared no more than two hundred years ago. In the English village, for example, for which this one in the New World was named, and whose rector we have the honour and pleasure of greeting here to- day, the church, which was removed a generation ago, had stood, almost certainly, for at least five hundred years. One of its bells bears the date A.D. 1460. The beautiful ceiling of its choir, carved of oak blackened by age, piously removed from the old chancel to that of the tasteful early Eng- lish church of stone now standing, is believed to date from the fourteenth century.
A couple of years ago there was commemorated, in that other Wickford, the six hundredth anni- versary of the institution of the first recorded rec- tor of the parish. At the end of the long line (may it for many a year be the last) stands the name of my worthy brother here present, as the fifty-fifth holder of the office. But the actual beginnings of
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the parish are, literally, lost in the mists of anti- quity. It is not unlikely that it has existed, in some form, for a thousand years.
It was Elizabeth Read, born in Old Wickford, almost three hundred years ago, who, as the wife of Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut, in travelling by this spot, "in," as it is chronicled, "ye Beginning of ye Country," gave the name of her beloved birthplace to this village, and all un- consciously her own Christian name, also, to "Elizabeth's Spring" at East Greenwich. In the earliest vellum-bound register of the English parish (almost a counterpart in appearance of the one, spotted and stained by two centuries of use, be- longing to this one), it is recorded: "Elizabeth Read, daughter of Edmund Reade, was baptized November 27, 1614." On some of the antique gravestones in Old Wickford churchyard may be read the name of Read, belonging doubtless to kinsfolk of Mrs. Winthrop, one of them at least being that of some other long-ago Elizabeth.
But little claim as has St. Paul's Church in Nar- ragansett to the title ancient, when judged by the standards of an older world, it is yet most respec- table in age from its own point of view. Only sev- enty years before it was built, the aboriginal In- dians were still ranging, untroubled by the white settler, over this fair territory. Only eighty-seven years previously the Pilgrim Fathers stepped upon Plymouth Rock. The anniversary of the earliest English settlement in America, just being cele-
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brated by the Virginians at Jamestown, with so great éclat, is but the three hundredth.
Take the two centuries of the existence of this structure for a measuring-rod, and one length of it, backward from the year when the sacred house was built, brings us to the days when the European world was still thrilling in view of the unveiling to its gaze of a new and undreamed-of hemisphere. Again, lay down the rod upon the ringing floor of time, and two lengths more carry to the making of Modern England by William the Conqueror, and William Rufus, and Henry Beauclerc, while a far- ther five lengths (but eight in all) take one to that wonderful age when St. John had but lately passed away, and men were still living who could converse upon the aspect in the flesh of St. Peter and St. Paul,-nay, who had looked into the face of the Son of God Himself. Be not slow, then, to yield the palm of venerableness to an edifice whose age bears such an inconsiderable ratio to the whole Christian era.
As to the personnel of this church, at its be- ginning, it is possible to name sixteen families, liv- ing in Narragansett at the opening of the eighteenth century, whose members were attached to the form of worship of the Church of England. Long before that time Church services had been held in pri- vate houses,- Richard Smith's and Jireh Bull's, -by the Rev. William Blackstone and the Rev. Mr. Spear. But so many Churchmen-most of them people of substance and leaders in the social
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life of Narragansett-could not, of course, rest contented with only the infrequent ministrations of itinerant clergymen, and a lack of any house of public worship. It thus came about that as early as 1702 a petition was received by the Bishop of London for a minister to be settled in Narragan- sett. In that same year, in the month of February, the newly formed Society for the Propagation of the Gospel recorded its opinion "that a missionary should be sent to the Narragansett Country." But although the Rev. George Keith visited the region, by appointment, at the end of the ensuing summer and preached at Mr. Updike's and Mr. Balfour's, no settled clergyman made his appearance until the autumn of 1706, when the Rev. Christopher Bridge arrived from Boston, and St. Paul's Church (whether by name or not we do not know) was founded.
Such was the youthful zeal of Mr. Bridge, the rector, seconded by the equally zealous efforts of the laity, that when the first anniversary of his ar- rival came around, this comfortable, if not especially beautiful, House of God was standing to rejoice their hearts. Of the details of its construction we have no information. It was needed, and it was supplied. That is the sufficient story.
But of the fact of its building in that year, there is ample evidence. Dr. MacSparran, in "America Dissected," testifies: "A little Church was built in Newport, the Metropolis of the Colony, in 1702, and that, in which I officiate in Narragansett, in
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1707;" and Dr. Humphreys, the Secretary of the S. P. G., records: "The people of Narragansett made application to the Bishop of London, about the year 1707, for a Missionary, and built a Church soon after by the voluntary contributions of the Inhabitants. It is a Timber Building and commo- diously situated for those who generally attend Divine Service." How so many English Church- men could in the course of a generation or so have so far forgotten the ecclesiastical architecture of their old home, as to take the New England meeting- house, with two stories of windows and an im- mense gallery, as the model for their church, is an unsolved problem. Such, however, must have been the difficulties of building at all that they had no choice but to use timber instead of stone, and so, naturally enough, fell into the prevailing style of ecclesiastical structures in the young colonies. The time of Richard Upjohn was not yet.
An interesting and curious corroboration of the date of building the church has lately, through the researches of the present rector of St. Paul's, come to light, in the shape of the somewhat mutilated record of what purports to be the deed of the land on which it was built. It is signed "Bennoney Sweet and Elizabeth his wife," they making their marks, and dated June 17, 1707. As Mr. Sweet is known to have lived in the last house on the right before one reaches Ridge Hill, in going south- wards,-a point not much more than a half mile from the old "Platform," where the Narragansett
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Church, for nigh a century, stood, -the pious gift may well have been a part-"two acres more or less"-of the conveyor's farm.
Of the opening of the new sanctuary, -so long desired, -we have, unhappily, no record. But the elements of an imaginary picture are not far to seek. Perhaps the first service was held on a bright au- tumn day corresponding in season to this, on which we are assembled to commemorate the occasion. If three months from the date of the deed of the land seems too little a time to allow for the building, it is not unreasonable to infer that the enterprise had been begun in the early spring, some months before the signing of the deed. Nor is it unlikely, too, that eagerness to use the new church has outrun its en- tire completion. It is almost impossible to over- estimate the jubilance which lights up every face among the participants. First of all is our attention attracted by the arrival of the rector, still in the exuberance of early manhood, his age being but about thirty-six years. Perhaps he has set the date of entering the new church on the first anniversary of his arrival in Narragansett. We are told that Mr. Bridge was "a very good scholar, and a fine grave preacher," and (somewhat jarringly) that "his per- formances in the pulpit were solid, judicious and profitable, -his conversation agreeable and im- proving."
Now there enters from "Smith's Castle" at Wickford, five miles away, one whom we may style "the lord of the manor," Captain Lodowick Up-
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dike, with his two bright lads, Richard, of about fifteen years, and Daniel, of thirteen, the latter to become, in the course of a few years, the most prominent parishioner of St. Paul's and the dis- tinguished Attorney-General of the Colony. Along with them, Mrs. Updike leads in her four little daughters, Esther, Catharine, Abigail and Sarah, the last afterwards to be Mrs. Goddard, the ancestress of the well-known Providence family of that name.
Here, too, approaches from his great estate in Boston Neck Andrew Willett, the son of Thomas, the first mayor of the city of New York, his two youngsons, Francis and Thomas, holding his hands. Behind them, walk a group of Albros, who well may set great store by the services of the Church of England, inasmuch as their father or grandfather was reared in Ipswich, in that country, a small town then containing nineteen parish churches.
Here follows Thomas Mumford, with his six fine sons, ranging from twenty years of age down to nine, to become in the next generation pillars of the Church, the eldest of them, named for his father, being destined to be the grandfather of Bishop Seabury, the choir-leader of the episcopate in America.
See, yonder, a polished-looking English gentle- man, who is being treated with much deference by all who meet him. It is George Balfour, merchant and owner of a farm on Pettaquamscutt River, where he entertained the Rev. George Keith on his progress through the country five years ago. Of
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all the laymen of the parish, to Mr. Balfour alone will be accorded upon his death (a quarter of a century hence) the honour of interment under the church, the floor of his own pew being removed for the purpose.
Now there enter the two brothers, Samuel Brown, and William, probably grandsons of the well-known Chad Brown, of Providence, William to become the grandfather of Governor George Brown, himself the grandfather of the well-known Churchmen at Westerly, Rouse and Edwin Babcock.
Nor should weomit to notice Samuel Phillips, from the fine mansion at " Phillips's Brook," whose sons, Thomas and Christopher, are to prove during the coming half century among the staunchest sup- porters of the Church in Narragansett, and whose great-grandson, Major Samuel Phillips, is to dis- tinguish himself in the Revolutionary War, as one of the captors of General Prescott.
But time would fail us to tell of more of the peo- ple of interest and character gathered in St. Paul's Church, on this its opening day. We cannot, how- ever, close the survey without a glance at the impor- tant Gardiner family, members of which are gladly presentin the new sanctuary to-day, and from which, a few years hence, Dr. MacSparran will select his beautiful young wife; while from it such distin- guished Churchmen as Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, the founder of the city on the Kennebec, and Rev. Dr. John Sylvester John Gardiner of Boston, will arise.
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For a half century after the building of the Nar- ragansett church we are uninformed as to what may have happened to the edifice, except that it was almost constantly used for public worship, espe- cially during the long and fruitful rectorship of MacSparran, who, with his forceful personality and immense moral energy, may almost be deemed the maker of Narragansett. But by a singular stroke of good fortune, at the period when this Apostle closed his ministry, and his successor, Parson Fayerweather, took up his staff, we know just how the pews of the church were arranged, -i. e. substantially as they are now, -and who sat in them, -shadows all for now near a hundred years. Let us fancy ourselves attend- ing a service at St. Paul's on a Sunday morning, in mid-September, for example, in 1763. Here, where I am standing now, you can behold Samuel Fayer- weather, handsome and courtly, in his wig and gown and bands, as you may see him in his fine portrait, still existing, by Copley. He is reputed to be of brilliant ability, an interesting sermonizer, yet with such an odd streak in his nature that he has almost never been known to express a fact in a simple straightforward manner, if there were any possible quaint, quizzical and circumlocutory form in which to couch it. If he baptizes an infant, he does not call it an infant, but "a little infantile."
At my immediate right, in "the minister's pew" (where for more than a generation used to be seen the handsome Mrs. MacSparran), sits Mrs. Fayer- weather, to whom the rector has recorded, in the
--
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Parish Register, that he was married only last Feb- ruary, in Newport, at eight o'clock in the morning, on " An Exceedingly Cold Day," he himself preach- ing "on the occasion," at a little later hour, from the text, "Do all to the glory of God." Although Mrs. Fayerweather was the widow of the Rev. Peter Bours, of Marblehead, she is still "to the manner born," in Narragansett, and, as a daughter of Gov- ernor George Hazard of South Kingstown, and a sister of Mayor George Hazard of Newport, not at all likely to permit herself to be overlooked.
Next beyond the "minister's pew" is the very large square one known as Benoni Sweet's, occupied to-day by members of his family, Captain Sweet himself, the original grantor of the land, on which the church is standing, having died a dozen years since. In the corner pew, beyond, sit Squire Francis Willett and his wife, Mary, his father and his brother Thomas, present with him as a lad, at the opening of the church, having long ago passed away.
First around the corner is the pew of John Gardiner, a brother of Mrs. MacSparran and Dr. Sylvester, and one of the wardens of the church. He is a most worthy and valuable citizen, but his brother-in-law, Dr. MacSparran, who knew "Brother John" well and loved and respected him much, remarks of him, in his Diary, "John, as he always was, is of stiff and sturdy Temper." His wife, Mary Taylor, and her young and blooming family suffice to fill the pew. In the middle of this
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right side-wall of the church, as I stand, is the altar, it being the eastern side, for the church, here in its first location, faces the north, our Narragansett Churchmen holding strongly to orientation, if not sticklers for anything else churchly in architecture.
Passing one pew, beyond the altar, we come to the great one in the corner at my right, belonging to Lodowick Updike, grandson of the Captain Lodowick of fifty years ago, and son of Colonel Daniel, both of whom have entered the unseen world. Mr. Updike, like some of the other mag- nates of St. Paul's, appears in the bravery of red coat, embroidered waistcoat, powdered hair and sil- ver-buckled shoes. His sprightly and accomplished wife, Abigail Gardiner, and two or three visitors share the pew with him, even his eldest son, Daniel, being still too young to appear in church.
Passing two or three pews, near the great north door, -those of Stephen Cooper, Thomas Brown and Mr. Robertson, -and the staircase to the gal- lery, now in the farther corner, at my left, we reach the immediately adjoining pew, against the western wall, chiefly interesting for having been occupied by Mrs. Adam Powell, a daughter of Gabriel Ber- non, the Huguenot, who lived in this parish many years since.
The middle portion of the side wall ofthe church, at my left, is destined to undergo more changes than any other portion of the building. At present there is no pew at this point, but a small door into the narrow passage running along the western side
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of the church. When the structure shall have been transferred to Wickford and its position reversed, so that this side will become the eastern one, this will be the site of the altar. But later still, as sit- tings become more scarce, the Communion Table will be removed to the front of the pulpit (leaving a trace of the altar-canopy above upon the wall), and the space devoted to a roomy pew, allotted to the numerous family of Dr. Shaw. The pews of John Norton, John Cole, Samuel Brown, and Elisha Cole occupy the remainder of the wall-room, to the pulpit.
The centre of the church contains twelve nearly square pews, where later there will be ten long, narrow slips. Without enumerating particularly all their occupants, it may be noticed that three be- long to Gardiners, two to Albros, two to Phillipses, two to Dickinsons, one to Samuel Bissell, one to Captain Richard Updike, cousin of Lodowick, and one-the one immediately opposite the "minister's pew"-to Benjamin Mumford, whom we saw, as a lad of eleven, at the opening of the church, and who, along with his wife Ann, is now one of the most venerable, useful and honoured of its atten- dants. Seldom is there a baptism where "old Mr. Mumford" and his spouse do not stand as "gossips."
It is a curious example of the entirely relative character of the terms old and new that, soon after the period of the death of Dr. MacSparran, peo- ple began to designate this edifice as the "Old Church." John Case of Tower Hill, one of the
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wardens, who died July 29, 1770, left in his will a handsome legacy "for repairing the old Church of St. Paul's, in North Kingstown," and at the Easter meeting of 1771, a committee was raised, which reported "that the old Church is in a ruinous state, and almost past repairing," i. e. one hundred and thirty-six years ago. It must be acknowledged, however, that those who encouraged this view of the dilapidation of the old church were planning to build a new one, at a point somewhat distant and nearer their own homes, while those who desired to retain the site made a much more optimistic estimate of the "Old Church's" susceptibility to restoration. There was plainly human nature in even idyllic "Old Narragansett."
After the opening of the Revolutionary struggle, the building was closed for many years. Some of the legends which grew up about it during this period, while puerile in themselves, serve to mark the advance in popular intelligence, from the clos- ing portion of the eighteenth century to the open- ing of the twentieth. It was commonly reported that when a death was to occur in the house of any of the surrounding inhabitants, warning spectre-lights shone at night in the windows of the Old Church.
Much, too, has been declared, of the nature of romance, concerning the alleged high-handed and secret manner in which the movement was carried on when it had, at length, been decided to remove the edifice to Wickford. It used to be asserted that supernatural agencies were engaged in frustrating
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the profanation of the ancient Sanctuary, tempest after tempest arising and driving away the work- men whenever they began the task of taking down the structure. It was a common tale that, finally, the building was removed bodily and secretly, in a sin- gle night, over rough, narrow and often winding country-roads, in order to elude the outraged pa- rishioners. But records and sober tradition nega- tive this fable. It had long been coming to be recog- nized that the conditions which, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had favoured the eligi- bility of the original site of the church had ceased to be operative. The centres of population had with- drawn far away from it, on either side. On Decem- ber 3, 1799, at one p. M., during the rectorship of the Rev. Joseph Warren, twelve men of St. Paul's Church met (after repeated adjournments to secure a fuller attendance), and it was voted that "said Church of St. Paul's be removed to the village of Wickford, from the place where it now stands, and that the said people and members of the Church in North Kingstown, be empowered to remove said building accordingly."
Nine of those present voted yea, two voted nay, and one declined to vote either way. Sometime, therefore, during the year 1800, in a perfectly legit- imate and workmanlike, not to say even common- place, manner, the honoured edifice was taken down and set up again where it now stands. At first it was used in an unfinished condition, tempo- rary rough benches serving to seat the congrega-
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tion, but it is supposed to have soon after assumed substantially its present appearance. The lot upon which the renovated church was placed, and where, after more than a century, it still remains (con- sisting of a quarter of an acre), had been originally devoted to such a purpose by Captain Lodowick Updike, and was regularly conveyed to the parish, by deed, by Lodowick Updike, his grandson, when seventy-eight years of age, on August 1, 1803.
Somewhat later, in about 1811, a tower and bel- fry, which the church had never possessed before removal, were built upon the western side, and, after standing about a half century, without any provo- cation fell to the ground on a perfectly quiet night, the construction being 'supposed to have lacked the substantial qualities of the older main building.
A remarkable event in connection with the edi- fice occurred in 1819, during the incumbency of the Rev. Patrick H. Folker (or Falker), styled by a contemporary chronicler, "a Pious minister from Charleston, South Carolina, who was our Pas- tor one year." It seems singular that a building should have been used as a House of God for one hundred and twelve years without consecration, and at that late hour presented to receive the rite. Yet such appears to have been the case with St. Paul's. The parish records show that at a meet- ing held April 24, 1819, it was "voted and re- solved that the wardens, or either of them, be and are hereby requested and authorized to invite the Rt. Rev. A. V. Griswold to consecrate the church
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edifice in Wickford and set it apart for the worship and service of Almighty God;" and at the conven- tion of the Eastern Diocese, assembled at Newport, September 27, 1820, Bishop Griswold recorded in his address, "in the spring of last year, the old Church in North Kingstown (R. I.) was put in com- plete repair, and a bell has been added. On the 6th of May it was dedicated to God's glory and wor- ship."
The sacred structure continued in regular use until the close of 1847, one hundred and forty years from its original construction, when the pre- sent church on Main Street was built, during the rectorship of the Rev. John H. Rouse, it being consecrated, upon the Festival of the Conversion of St. Paul, in 1848 by Bishop Henshaw. Since that period the Old Church has been used only occasion- ally, particularly upon summer Sunday afternoons.
From time to time needed repairs have been made upon it, especially through the efforts of the present rector, the Rev. Frederick B. Cole.
When the speaker entered upon the charge of this parish, nearly two scores of years ago, a gener- ation was in existence which had grown up in the Old Church, and still regarded it with the heartiest enthusiasm and affection, such as probably not one, now living, can entertain. Its services and other as- semblies were intertwined with all that was noblest and most delightful in their lives. There they had been instructed and catechized in the Sunday-school, and through the sermons of faithful rectors. There
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they had bowed their heads, for the first time, be- fore the Altar, to receive the Holy Communion. Sometimes, when fond recollection called up pic- tures of the joyous days of youth, they would de- scribe, with kindling eye, the splendours, never to be again equalled, of the Christmas Eve Festival in the Old Church, when the snow lay deep and sparkled in the moonlight in Church Lane, and the insistent bell rang out its merry peal, "Come one, come all," and the gleaming of a hundred candles streamed out through the tiny windowpanes, with a glory such as no thousand modern electric lights could evolve; and, within, the whole place was em- bowered in hemlock and pine and laurel, -you can see the marks, to-day, where their boughs were nailed densely over the columns,- and
When shepherds watched their flocks by night, and
Hark ! the herald angels sing,
and
Shout the glad tidings, exultingly sing,
rent the air, and the minister prayed, devoutly, "O God, who by the leading of a star." Oh ! how would those "Old Church" children, of seventy years since, have rejoiced had they been permitted to live to see this two hundredth birthday of the structure which they loved so well.
As I prepare to dismount from this lofty pulpit of the olden time, a vision of the future breaks upon
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my gaze. It is the year of grace 2007. The people of that faraway time, now so shadowy, have gath- ered in great numbers, some from afar, in this an- tique House of God (still preserved with patient solicitude and tender veneration), to commemorate the three hundredth anniversary of its erection, and we are now the shadows. How they have come hither we can but faintly forecast. Perhaps (by means of fresh discoveries in science and fresh in- ventions) they have approached gliding over the surface of the unresisting sea, with inconceivable velocity. Perhaps the kingdoms of the air have been taken captive by cunning man, and they have come flying upon the wings of the wind. Perhaps they have arrived in chariots travelling through the bowels of the earth, under the hills and beneath the rivers, at the rate of hundreds of miles an hour. But whatever the material changes which shall have been wrought during the century, now struggling to its birth, still greater are the triumphs of the spiritual world. I see this old parish doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size and vigour. I behold it worship- ping in a spacious and noble new church of stone. I descry our beloved diocese strengthened and developed, until no town or village within its borders is without its temple of our faith. I see the Church of the United States, with its now two hundred millions of population, doing its work in every inch of its almost boundless territory. Nay, the whole world seems rejoicing in the fresh outpouring of the light, and the dream of the enthusiast of the be-
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ginning of the century is fulfilled, in that every ear upon the earth has had an opportunity to listen to the good news of the Gospel. The old divisions of Christians, too, have been largely healed, and there is a practical realization of the Divine watch- word, "One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism."
And to that blessed consummation wrought in a hundred years, be sure that the prayers and praises which have been offered in this Sanctuary (trans- mitted to us from the olden days), and the sermons which have been preached in it, and the sacraments which have been ministered in it, have contributed their mite-and more than a mite-of coopera- tion. The word that truly goeth forth out of the mouth of the Lord cannot return unto Him void.
Verily, then, is this House, with all its fragrant memories of holy men and women, who have wor- shipped within its walls, for generation after gen- eration, "a golden vial full of odours, which are the prayers of saints."
IAN
IN C.
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